1977 - 8 to 11

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International Review no. 11 - 4th Quarter

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Review: The communist left in Germany, 1918-21 (1)

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Firstly, we welcome the recent appearance of this work by D. Authier and J. Barrot, which clearly attempts to make a clear analysis of the Left Communists from the viewpoint of revolutionary marxism, and which moreover will allow revolutionaries to study hitherto inaccessible texts of the Communist Left. The book is one of the very few2 to put forward the communist perspective -- the only possible perspective in the historical period inaugurated by the Russian Revolution -- of the proletarian revolution. The book has many strengths, but also some weaknesses, which we would like to discuss here.

The error of modernism

The book is divided into two parts, the first analyzing the general historical sit­uation and the evolution of the groups which made up the Communist Left, and the second a collection of texts. In general in their analysis, the authors are not clearly aware of the new epoch inaugurated by World War I. They do not see that the war marked the end of that period when the capitalist mode of production could effec­tively develop the productive forces; when it in fact increasingly became a barrier to all further development, a barrier concrete­ly expressed in the periodic necessity for capitalism to destroy a huge part of the productive forces in world wars. The text never clearly states the material cause for the desertion of the whole social democratic movement -- mass parties and unions -- into the camp of the bourgeoisie: the end of the period of capitalist ascendency and the onset of the period of decadence, when the only tasks of the proletariat are the destruction of the bourgeois state and the creation of the international dictatorship of the wor­kers’ councils.

Obscuring the fundamental phenomenon of the change of period behind such epiphenomena as the extraction of relative surplus value (which Marx called the real domination of capital) made possible by the huge increase in the productivity of labour, the authors fall prey to modernist sophism -- claiming to see a so-called dichotomy between the reformism of the “old workers’ movement” (which corresponds to the ascendant period) and the purity of the “new’ one. This leads them to state that “the German proletariat remained wholly reformist”, as did the “majority of the working class” (p.83). And from there they take the small step of integrating the weight of bourgeois ideology (ie reformism) into the essential nature of the working class, which in fact, whether it likes it or not, cannot be ‘reformist’ or ‘for-capital’ -- or any other novel conception.

The working class is strictly determined by its socio-economic position in production. This forces it to constantly struggle against capital; this is class struggle. The change of period only changes the conditions in which this struggle takes place. The struggle was always revolution­ary (cf the Paris Commune), but within the framework of a progressive system the struggle was able to win reforms -- real improvements in its conditions of exploita­tion. The changing conditions in which the class struggle develops are thus directly linked to the change of period which marks the passage of the capitalist system into its era of historic decline. By integrating the bourgeois ‘disorder’ of reformism into the revolutionary nature of the working class, one can no longer understand why the working class is the revolutionary class, the bearer of communism; nor how the ‘reformist’ nature of the proletarian can become revolutionary, unless by the wave of a magic wand ... No, “the proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing” (letter from Marx to Schweitzer, 1865). This means that its struggle has always been a struggle against capital, a revolutionary struggle, a struggle which is political from the start because it aims, consciously or not, at the destruction of the bourgeois state. Thus it is precisely this change in the conditions of struggle which means that the working class, in the decadent period, can only form organizations whose purpose is the seizure of power, the workers’ councils, and which forces it to give rise to its class party as a minority of the class, a concrete expression of pro­letarian class consciousness. We can see here very clearly why the workers’ councils are not “the discovery of the form of the new workers’ movement” but are a concreti­zation of its invariable content, a content which is the driving force of proletarian struggle and which the historic period imposes as a necessity for humanity: communism, classless society.

The myth of the opposition between the Italian Left and the German Left

This myth, upheld most notably by the ‘orthodox Bordigists’ of the International Communist Party3, opposes the ‘anarchism’ of the German Left to the ‘marxism’ of the Italian Left. But while it is true that the Italian Left developed its positions with a more rigorous analysis, the whole of the international left was a product of the same movement, defending, irrespective of natio­nality, the same fundamentally correct pos­itions: marxist anti-parliamentarianism; opposition to the unions; the rejection of frontism; the need for minority parties, welded together by strict communist princi­ples and rejecting all the opportunist tactics of the past. This book is particu­larly effective in dispelling this myth.

Barrot and Authier show that, even if an international left communist fraction was never constituted, the left fraction existed in all countries (Belgium with Jan Over­straeten and L’Ouvrier Communiste was no exception), and in particular that there were strong programmatic ties between the communist abstentionist fraction of the Italian Socialist Party (I1 Soviet) and the German Communist Left (Pannekoek and Gorter). In fact it was the Italian fraction which, after its conference in Florence in May 1920, instructed its delegates to the Communist International “to constitute an anti-parliamentian fraction within the IIIrd International ...” and insisted “on the incompatibility between communist principles and methods, and participation in elections alongside bourgeois representatives” (pps. 313-4). It was with the same aim, one year later, that delegates of the KAPD (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany) went to the IIIrd Congress of the CI. And Terraccini, dele­gate of the Italian Communist Party at the same Congress, supported the intervention of the KAPD against the frontist ‘tactic’ of the ‘open letter’. One could cite many more examples of common positions to demon­strate the programmatic links existing bet­ween the different left communist groups. But it is enough to say that all the left fractions were the product of the same move­ment, based on the realization that the international communist revolution was the order of the day, the only possible way for­ward for the working class. The weakness of the left equally expressed itself in their inability to create a real internatio­nal left fraction, able to struggle effec­tively against the degeneration of the CI, which was moving inexorably, on account of the defeat of the world revolution, towards the bourgeois camp. One could cite, apart from the German and Dutch Left and the Italian Left, the Hungarian Left around Bela Kun, Vorga and Lukacs, the Bulgarian Left around I. Ganchev, John Reed in America, Pankhurst’s group in England, the French Left with Lepetit and Sigrand, the Workers’ Opposition and Miasnikov’s group in Russia ... but as this extract from the text ‘The German Left and the Union Question in the IIIrd International’4 (see p.189) clearly shows:

“Just as the Commune was the ‘Child of the International Workingmen’s Association’ (Engels), the German Revolution was the child of the international left, which was never able to complete the task of forging itself into a unified organiza­tion. But from the stronger sections of the Left: the German Left, which dared in its struggles to follow the program­matic lead given by the revolutionary movement itself; and the Italian Left, whose historic task was to continue the work of the international left, to deve­lop and apply its understanding in its attacks against the victorious counter­revolution; from the work of these groups we can forge the theoretical arms which will form the basis of the future revolu­tionary movement, whose practice will be inspired ... by the example of the Ger­man Left. The future revolution will not be a question of banal repetition; but it will take up the historic thread begun by the international Communist Left.”

The German left and the question of the Party

Another important issue raised by this book, is, among all the weaknesses of the German Communists, that which proved most damaging of all: their incomprehension of the fundamental need of the proletariat for a strong ‘vanguard’, constituted before the decisive battles, which had decisively broken with all the opportunist and bourgeois positions taken up by the social democratic parties. To bring out the mistakes of the past does not mean rejecting the heroic struggle of the communist left. On the contrary, it allows revolutionaries to draw vital less­ons for the proletarian movement concerning the function and role of the communist vanguard. In this respect the German exper­ience is full of hesitations and misunder­standings; but we can also see a clear break with substitutionism and careerism, and a growing understanding that the ‘centrists’ of the CPs were being led, with the reflux of the revolutionary movement, into the camp of the bourgeoisie; this was expressed by their adoption of the position of ‘socialism in one country’, the very nega­tion of the communist programme. On the other hand one should not see the German Left as homogeneous, riddled to the core by ‘wait-and-seeism’ (the heritage of Rosa Luxemburg’s hesitations in breaking from Social Democracy), or by the denial of the need for revolutionary minorities, although the latter tendency did eventually find theoretical expression in the Essen tendency and the AAUD-E (General Workers’ Union of Germany -- Unitary Organization), with Otto Ruhle and Die Aktion. In fact the ‘Theses of the KAPD on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution’ dwelt at length on the need for the proletariat to create for itself “the historically determined form of organization which groups together the most conscious and prepared proletarian militants ... is the party.” The party must thus above all intransigently rid itself of all reformism and opportunism. This applies equally to its programme, its tactics, its publications, its specific slogans and its actions. In particular it must never inc­rease its membership more quickly than its ability to create a strong communist nucleus permits.5

In the same sense, the interventions of Jan Appel at the Third Congress of the CI, are also significant6:

“The proletariat needs an extremely tightly constructed party or nucleus. This is essential. Each individual com­munist must be irreproachable -- this must be our goal -- and able to assume the responsibilities of leadership if need be. In his relations, in the struggles into which he is plunged, he must be able to hold on -- and what he is holding on to, his lifeline, is the programme. He acts according to the decisions taken by communists. Here, the strictest pos­sible discipline reigns. If he fails in this, he must be expelled or disciplined. Thus it is a question of a party which is a nucleus that knows what it wants, that is solidly constructed and has proved itself in combat that has finished with negotiations and struggles ceaselessly. Such a party cannot arise until it is actually thrown into the struggle, when it has broken with the old traditions of the union movement, with the reformist methods of the union movement, with parliamentarism.”

Such a clear text can leave no further doubt as to the profoundly marxist nature of the KAPD, and allows us to understand that it is the dynamic of the class struggle which gives rise to the class party. This means that in periods of counter-revolution, any attempt to form the party can only serve to spread confusion. All that can remain are small groups which preserve the programmatic gains and the class positions. But with the emergence of a new wave of class struggle, “it is no longer a question of simply defen­ding the positions, but (on the basis of a constant elaboration of these positions, on the basis of the programme of the class) of being capable of cementing the spontan­eity of the class, of being an expression of the consciousness of the class, of helping to unify its forces for the decisive offensive, in other words, of building the party, an essential moment in the victory of the proletariat.” (‘Lessons of the German Revolution’ in the International Review of the ICC, no.2.)

To conclude this short review, it should be pointed out that the choice of texts pre­sented is not really representative and does not include many of the best works of the German Left, as the authors themselves admit. But in any case the publication of these texts in French can only contribute to the recognition of this current as one of the most important of the international communist left.

This book will help satisfy the urgent need of the re-emerging revolutionary movement to: “know its own past to be better able to criticize the past.”

2 Among which is the other excellent work by D. Authier on this subject which includes more fundamental texts of the German Left: The German Left, (texts from the KAPD, AAUD, etc) – published by Invariance. A review of this book appears in Revolution Internationale no. 6 and Internationalism no. 5. For a more general treatment of this question there is an article in the International Review no. 2: ‘Lessons of the German Revolution’.

3 However, it is understandable that the degenerated vestiges of the International Communist Party try to camouflage their Leninist virtue with calumny and insinuations, since at least two splinter groups from the same PCI. Invariance and the Danish group, Kommunismen have republished some texts of the German Left.

4 This text is in fact by the Kommunismen group, which split from PCI in 1972.

5 Extract from Invariance no. 8. This text is available in English in Revolutionary Perspectives no. 4.

Geographical:

Political currents and reference:

Texts on the state in the period of transition

The platform of the ICC contains the essential acquisitions of the workers’ movement concerning the conditions and content of the communist revolution. These acquisitions can be summarized as follows:

a) All hitherto existing societies have been based on an insufficient development of the productive forces in relation to the needs of men. Because of this, with the exception of primitive communism, they have all been divided into social classes with antagonistic interests. This division has led to the appearance of an organ, the state, whose specific function has been to prevent these antagonisms from pulling society apart.

b) Because of the progress in the develop­ment of the productive forces stimulated by capitalism, it has become both possible and necessary to transcend capitalism with a society based on the full development of the productive forces, on the abundant satisfac­tion of human needs: communism. Such a society will no longer be divided into social classes and because of this will have no need of a state.

c) As in the past, between the two stable societies of capitalism and communism there will be a period of transition during which the old social relations will disappear and new ones put in their place. During this period, social classes and conflicts between them will continue to exist, and so therefore will an organ whose function is to prevent these conflicts endangering the existence of society: the state.

d) The experience of the working class has shown that there can be no organic continuity between this state and the state in capitalist society. For the period of transition from capitalism to communism to get underway, the capitalist state has to be complete­ly destroyed on a world scale.

e) The world-wide destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie is accompanied by the global seizure of power by the proletariat, the only class capable of creating communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat over society will be based on the general organizations of the class: the workers’ councils. Only the working class in its entirety can exert power and undertake the communist transformation of society: in contrast to previous revolution­ary classes it cannot delegate power to any particular institution or to any political party, including the workers’ parties themselves.

f) The full exercise of power by the proletariat presupposes:

-- the general arming of the class

-- a categorical rejection of any subordin­ation to outside forces

-- the rejection of any relations of violence within the class.

g) The dictatorship of the proletariat will carry out its role as the lever of social transformation:

-- by expropriating the old exploiting classes

-- by progressively socializing the means of production

-- by conducting an economic policy which aims at the abolition of wage labour and commodity production and the growing satisfaction of human needs.

The platform of the ICC, basing itself on the experience of the Russian revolution, underlines “the complexity and seriousness of the problem of the relationship between the class and the state in the period of transition.” It considers that “in the coming period, the proletariat and revolutionaries cannot evade this problem, but must make every effort to resolve it.” This resolution is part of that effort.

I. The specificity of the period of transition from capitalism to communism

The period of transition from capitalism to communism has a certain number of features in common with previous transition periods. Thus, as in the past:

-- the period of transition from capitalism to communism does not have its own mode of production, but is an intertwining of two modes of production.

-- during this period there is a slow development of the seeds of the new mode of production to the detriment of the old one, until the new completely supplants the old.

-- the dying away of the old society does not automatically mean the maturation of the new one; it is simply the precondition for this maturation. In particular, although the decadence of capitalism expresses the fact that the productive forces can no longer expand within the framework of capitalist society, these productive forces are still insufficient for communism and therefore have to be further developed during the period of transition.

The second common feature which should be pointed out is that all periods of trans­ition point towards the society which is going to emerge at the end. To the extent that communism is fundamentally different from all other societies; the transition to communism has a number of unprecedented characteristics:

a) It is no longer a transition from one exploiting society to another, from one form of property to another, but leads to the end of all exploitation and of all property.

b) It is not carried out by an exploiting class which owns the means of production, but by an exploited class which has never possessed and will never -- not even collec­tively -- possess its own economy or means of production.

c) It does not culminate in the conquest of political power by a revolutionary class which has already established its economic rule over society: on the contrary it begins with and is conditioned by this conquest of power. The only rule that the proletariat can exert over society is of a political and not of an economic nature.

d) The political power of the proletariat will not aim to stabilize an existing state of affairs, preserve particular privileges or maintain the existence of class divisions; on the contrary it will seek to continually overturn the existing state of affairs, to abolish all privileges and class divisions.

II. The state and its role in history

Following Engels’ own terminology:

-- the state is not a power imposed on society from outside, but is a product of society at a given stage of its development

-- it is a sign of the fact that society has entered into insoluble contradictions, is rent into an irreconcilable conflict between classes with antagonistic economic interests

-- it has the function of moderating the conflict, of maintaining it within the limits of ‘order’, so that the antagonistic classes and society itself are not consumed in sterile struggles

-- having emerged from society, it places itself above it, and constantly tends to conserve itself and become a force alien to society

-- its role of preserving ‘order’ identif­ies the state with the dominant relations of production and thus with the class which embodies these relations: the economically dominant class, which guarantees its political domination through the state.

Marxism has thus never considered the state to be the ex nihilo creation of the ruling class, but as the product, the organic secretion, of the whole of society. The identification between the economically dominant class and the state is fundamentally the result of their common interest in preserving the existing relations of production. Similarly, in the marxist conception, one can never consider the state as a revolutionary agency, an instrument of historical progress. For marxism:

-- the class struggle is the motor force of history

-- whereas the function of the state is to moderate the class struggle, and in particular to the detriment of the exploited class.

The only logical conclusion which can be drawn from these premises is that in any society the state can only be a conservative institution par excellence. Thus while the state in all class societies is an instrum­ent which is indispensable to the productive process in that it guarantees the stability needed if production is to continue, it can only play this role because of its function as an agent of social order. In the course of history the state has operated as a conservative and reactionary factor of the first order, an obstacle which the evolution and development of the productive forces has constantly come up against.

In order to be able to assume its role as an agent of security and of conservation the state has based itself on a material force, on violence. In past societies, it has had an exclusive monopoly of all existing forces of violence: the police, the army, prisons.

Since its origin lies in the historic necessity of violence, since the conditions for its own development are to be found in its coercive functions, the state tends to become an independent and supplementary factor of violence in the interests of its own preservation. Violence is transformed from a means into an end in itself, maintained and cultivated by the state; by its very nature this violence is antithetical to any form of society which tends to go beyond violence as a way of regulating relations between human beings.

III. The state in the period of transition to communism

During the period of transition the division of society into classes with antagonistic interests will give rise to a state. This state will have the task of guaranteeing the basis of this transitional society both against any attempt to restore the power of the old exploiting classes and against any disintegration of the social fabric resulting from conflicts between the non-exploiting classes which still subsist.

The state of the period of transition has a certain number of differences from previous states:

-- for the first time in history, it is not the state of an exploiting minority for the oppression of the majority, but is on the contrary the state of the majority of exploited and non-exploiting classes against the old ruling minority.

-- it is not the emanation of a stable society and relations of production, but on the contrary of a society whose permanent characteristic is a constant transformation on a greater scale than anything else in history

-- it cannot identify itself with any economically dominant class because there is no such class in the period of transition

-- in contrast to states in past societies, the transitional state does not have a monopoly of arms. For all these reasons marxists have talked about a ‘semi-state’ when referring to the organ which will arise in the transition period

On the other hand, this state still retains a number of the characteristics of past states. In particular, it will still be the guardian of the status quo, the task of which will be to codify, legalize, and sanction an already existing economic order, to give it a legal force which has to be acknowledged by every member of society. In this sense the state remains a fundament­ally conservative organ which will tend:

-- not to favourize social transformation but to act against it

-- to maintain the conditions on which its own life depends: the division of society into classes

-- to detach itself from society, to impose itself on society and perpetuate its own existence and its own privileges

-- to bind its existence to the coercion and violence which it will of necessity use during the period of transition, and to try to maintain this method of regulating social relations

This is why from the beginning marxists have always considered the state of the period of transition to be a ‘necessary scourge’ whose ‘worst sides’ the proletariat will have to ‘lop off as much as possible’. For all these reasons, and in contrast to what has happened in the past, the revolutionary class cannot identify itself with the state in the period of transition.

To begin with, the proletariat is not an economically dominant class, either in capitalist society or the transitional society. During the transition period it will possess neither an economy nor any property, not even collectively; it will struggle for the abolition of economy and property. Secondly, the proletariat, the communist class, the subject which transforms the economic and social conditions of the transitional society, will necessarily come up against an organ whose task is to perpetuate these conditions. This is why one cannot talk about a 'socialist state', a 'workers' state' or a 'state of the proletar­iat' during the period of transition.

This antagonism between the proletariat and the state manifests itself both on the immediate and the historical level.

On the immediate level, the proletariat will have to oppose the encroachments and pressure of a state which is the represent­ative of a society divided into antagonistic classes.

On the historic level, the necessary disappearance of the state in communist society, which is a perspective which marxism has always defended, will not be the result of the state’s own dynamic, but the fruit of the pressure mounted on it by the proletariat, which will progressively deprive it of all its attributes as the movement towards a classless society unfolds.

For these reasons, while the proletariat will have to use the state during the transition period, it must retain a complete independ­ence from it. In this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be confused with the state. Between the two there is a constant relation of force which the prolet­ariat will have to maintain in its favour: the dictatorship of the proletariat is not exerted through or in the state, but over the state.

Concrete relationships between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the transition period

The experience of the Paris Commune, and of the revolution in Russia during which the state became the main agent of the counter­revolution, have shown the need for a certain number of measures which will make it possible:

-- to limit the ‘worst sides’ of the state

-- to guarantee the full independence of the revolutionary class

-- for the proletariat to exert its dictatorship over the state

a) The limitation of the most pernicious characteristics of the transitional state is effected by the fact that:

-- the state is not constituted on the basis of a specialized stratum, the political parties, but on the basis of delegates elected by local territorial councils and revocable by them

-- the whole organization of the state categorically excludes the participation of exploiting classes and strata, who will be deprived of all political rights

-- the remuneration of the members of the state, the functionaries, can never be more than that of the workers

b) The independence of the working class is expressed by:

-- its programme

-- the existence of its class parties, which, in contrast to bourgeois parties, can neither be integrated into the state, nor take on any state function without degener­ating and completely losing their function in the class

-- the self-organization of the proletariat as a class in the workers’ councils, which are distinct from all state institutions

-- the arming of the proletariat

This independence is defended against the state and the other classes in society:

-- by the fact that the proletariat will forbid them from intervening in its own activity and organizations

-- by the fact that the proletariat will retain its capacity to defend its immediate interests through a number of means, including strikes

c) The dictatorship of the proletariat over the state and society as a whole is based essentially:

-- on the fact that the other classes are forbidden to organize themselves as classes

-- on the proletariat’s hegemonic participation within all the organizations upon which the state is founded

-- on the fact that the proletariat is , the only armed class

Proposed resolution on the period of transition, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the tasks of the workers’ state

“We must take into account the impossibility of arriving at a transitional phase with notions that are fixed, complete, which don’t allow any logical contradiction and which exclude any idea of a transition.” (Bilan)

A) The period of transition from capitalism to communism

(1) The succession of modes of production; slavery, feudalism, capitalism, did not, properly speaking, undergo periods of transition. The new relations on the base of which the progressive social form was being built was created inside the old society. The old system and the new coexisted (until the second supplanted the first) and this cohabitation was possible because between these different societies there only existed an antagonism of form; all remained in essence exploitative societies. The succession of communism from capitalism differs fundamentally from all previous societies. Communism cannot emerge within capitalism because between the two societies there is not only a difference of form but equally a difference of content. Communism is no longer a society of exploitation, and the motive force of production is no longer the satisfaction of the needs of a minority. This difference of content excludes the coexistence of one with the other and creates the necessity for a period of transition during which the new relations and the new society are developed outside capitalism.

(2) Between capitalist society and communist society there is a period of revolutionary transformation from one to the other. This transitional period is not only inevitable but also necessary to complete the immature material and spiritual condit­ions inherited by the proletariat from capitalism (an immaturity which precludes the immediate establishment of communism at the end of the revolution). This period is characterized by the fusion of two social processes, one dismantling the relations and categories belonging to the system in decline, the other building relations and categories relevant to the new system. The specificity of the epoch of transition resides in this: the proletariat which has conquered political power (by the revolut­ion) and guaranteed its domination (by its dictatorship) engages in the systematic and uninterrupted overthrow of the relations of production and the form of consciousness and organization dependent on those relations. During the intermediate period, using political and economic measures, the working class develops the productive forces left as the heritage of capitalism while under­mining the basis of the old system and laying the basis of new social relations. The proletariat will produce and distribute goods in such a way as to allow all the producers to realize the full satisfaction, the free expansion, of their needs.

B) The political regime in the period of transition

(3) For capitalism, the substitution of its privileges for feudal privileges -- the epoch of bourgeois revolutions -- was able to accommodate itself to a lasting coexistence between capitalist and feudal states and even pre-feudal states without altering or suppressing the basis of the new system. The bourgeoisie, on the basis of a gradual attainment of its economic position, did not have to destroy the state apparatus of the dominant class; it was able to gradually take it over. It did not have to suppress the bureaucracy, nor the police, nor the permanent armed forces; it simply had to subordinate these instruments of oppression to its own ends, because its political revolution (which was not always indispensable) merely concretized an economic hegemony and juridically substitut­ed one form of exploitation for another. Things are different for the proletariat, which, having no economic base and no particular interest, cannot content itself with taking over the old state apparatus. The period of transition cannot begin until after the proletarian revolution, whose essence is the global destruction of the political domination of capitalism and, primarily, of bourgeois nation states. The seizure of general political power in society by the working class, the institut­ion of the global dictatorship of the proletariat, precedes, conditions and guarantees the advance of the economic and social transformation.

(4) Communism is a society without classes, and, consequently, without a state. The period of transition, which does not really develop until after the triumph of revolut­ion at the international level, is a dynamic period which tends towards the disappearance of classes, but which still experiences the division into classes and the persistence of divergent interests and antagonisms in society. As such, there must inevitably arise a dictatorship and a form of political state. The proletariat cannot make up for the temporary insufficiency of the productive forces left over by capital­ism without resorting to constraint. In fact, the transitional epoch is characterized by the necessity to discipline and regiment the evolution of production, to expand production in such a way as to allow the establishment of a communist society. The danger of the restoration of the bourgeoisie is also a result of this insufficiency of production and of the productive forces. The dictatorship and the use made of the state are indispensable to the proletariat, which is faced with the necessity to direct the use of violence to root out the privileges of the bourgeoisie, to dominate it politically, and to organize in a new way the forces of production that are gradually being liberated from the fetters of capitalism.

C) Origins and role of the state in history

5) In all societies divided into classes, in order to prevent the classes with opposed and irreconcilable interests from destroying each other, and at the same time consuming the whole of society, there arise superstructures, institutions, whose pinnacle is the state. The state is born to maintain class conflict, within certain limits. This does not at all mean that it can manage to reconcile antagonistic inter­ests on a terrain of ‘democratic’ under­standing, nor that it can play the role of ‘mediator’ between classes. As the state arises from the need to discipline class antagonisms, but as at the same time it arises in the midst of class conflict, it is in general the state of the most powerful class, which has imposed itself politically and militarily on the historic relation of forces, and which, through the intermediary of the state, impose, its domination.

“The state is the special organization of a power” (Engels), it is the centralized exercise of violence by one class against the others, and has the task of providing society with a political framework ,which conforms to the interests of the ruling class The state is the organ which maintains the cohesion of society, not by realizing a so-called ‘common good’ (which is completely non-existent), but by carrying out all the tasks involved in the rule of a given class, at various levels: economic, juridical, political, and ideological. Its own role is not only one of administration, but above all, the maintenance, by violence, of the conditions of domination of the ruling class over the dominated classes; it is to assure the extension, the development, the conservation of specific relations of production, against the dangers of restorat­ion or of destruction.

(6) Whatever the forms that society, classes, and the state may take, the role of the latter always remains fundamentally the same: the assurance of the domination of one class over the others. The state is not then “a conservative organ by nature”. It is revolutionary in certain periods, conservat­ive or counter-revolutionary in others because, far from being an autonomous factor in history, it is the instrument, the extension, the form of organization of social classes which are born, mature and disappear. The state is tightly bound to the cycle of the class and so is proved to be progressive or reactionary according to the historic relation of the class to the devel­opment of the productive forces and of society (depending on whether it favours or acts as a fetter on such development).

It is necessary to be wary of holding onto a strictly ‘instrumentalist’ vision of the state. By definition a class weapon in the immediate conflicts of society, the state is affected in turn by those same conflicts. Far from being simply the tributary of the will of the ruling class, the state apparat­us sustains the pressure of various classes and various interests. Both the economic framework and the political and military relations of force intervene to determine the actions of the state (and the possibilit­ies for its evolution). It is in this sense that the state “is never in advance of the existing state of affairs”. In fact, if in certain periods the state allows progressive classes to exercise political power in order to extend their relations of production, it is constrained -- in these same periods and in pursuit of the same aims -- to defend the new society against internal and external dangers, to bind together scattered aspects of production, of distribution, of social, cultural and ideological life; and it must do this with means which do not always and necessarily emerge from the programme of the revolutionary class, from the basic tendencies of the nascent society. “Thus, it is necessary to consider that the formula ‘the state is the organ of a class’ is not, formally speaking, a response per se to the phenomena which have determined it, the philosophers stone which lies at the bottom of all enquiry; but it does mean that the relations between class and state are determined by the function of a given class” (Bilan).

D) The need for soviets as the state power of the proletariat

(7) The state which succeeds the bourgeois state is a new form of organization of the proletariat, by virtue of which it trans­forms itself from an oppressed class into a ruling class and exercises its revolution­ary dictatorship over society. The territorial soviets (of workers, poor peasants, soldiers...) as the state power of the proletariat signify:

-- the attempt by the proletariat, as the only class which is the bearer of socialism, to struggle for the organization of all the exploited classes and strata

-- the continuation, with the help of the soviet system, of the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, which remains the most powerful class even at the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, even after its expropriation and political subordination.

The proletariat still has need of a state apparatus, as much for repressing the desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie as for directing the mass of the population in the struggle against the capitalist class and for the establishment of communism. There is no need to idealize this situation: “The state is only a transitional institut­ion which will be used in the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free peoples’ state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries.” (Engels)

(8) A product of the division of society into classes, of the irreconcilable nature of class antagonisms, the dictatorship of the proletariat is distinguished however from the power (and thus the state) of past ruling classes, by the following characteristics:

a) the proletariat does not exercise its dictatorship with a view to building a new society of oppression and exploitation. In consequence, it has no need, like old ruling classes, to hide its aims, to mystify other classes by presenting its dictatorship as the reign of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”. The proletariat resolutely affirms that its dictatorship is a class dictatorship; that the organs of its political power are the organs which serve, by their activity, the proletarian programme, to the exclusion of the programmes and interests of all other classes. It is in this sense that Marx, Engels, Lenin and the Fraction spoke -- and had to speak -- not of a state “of the majority of exploited and non-exploiting classes” (the encapsulation of the intermediate formations in the state is not synonymous with a division of power), not of a “non-class” state, or a “multi-class” state (ideological and aberrant concepts), but of a proletarian state, a state of the working class, which will be one of the indispensable forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

b) the domination of the majority, organized and directed by the proletariat, over the minority, dispossessed of their prerogatives, renders useless the maintenance of a bureaucratic and military machine; the proletariat puts in its place both its self-arming -- to smash all bourgeois resistance -- and a political form which allows it (and eventually the whole of humanity) to progressively take over the management of society. It suppresses the privileges inherent in the functioning of the old states (leveling of salaries, rigorous control of functionaries through election and permanent revocability) and also the separation, enforced by parliament­arism, between legislative and executive organs. From its formation, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat ceases to be a state in the old sense of the term.

For the bourgeois state is substituted the Soviets, a semi-state, a Commune-state; the organization of the rule of the old class is replaced by institutions essentially different in principle.

E) Withering away or strengthening of the state

(9) Considering what we have said about the conditions and historic surroundings in which the proletarian state is born, it is evident that its disappearance cannot be conceived of except as a sign of the development of the world revolution, and more profoundly, the economic and social transformation. In unfavourable conditions for struggle (on the political, economic and military level) the workers’ state can find itself constrained to strengthen itself, both to prevent the disintegration of society, and to carry out the tasks of the defence of a proletarian dictatorship erected in one or several countries. This obligation reacts in turn on its own nature: the state acquires a contradictory character. Whilst being the instrument of a class, it is at the same time forced to organize distribution and social, responsib­ilities according to norms which are not always and necessarily relevant, to an immediate tendency towards communism. In coherence with the conception developed by Lenin, Trotsky and above all Bilan we must then admit -- beyond metaphysical preoccupat­ions -- that the workers’ state, although assuring the domination of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, always expresses it’s temporary powerlessness to suppress bourgeois right. This continues to exist, not only in the economic and social process, but in the heads of millions of proletarians, billions of individuals. Even after the political victory of the proletariat, the state continually threatens to give rise to social stratifications which more and more stand against the liberating mission of the working class. Also, in certain periods, “if the state, instead of wither­ing away, becomes more and more despotic, if the mandates of the working class bureaucratize themselves, while the bureaucracy erects itself over society, this is not only for secondary reasons, such as ideological survivals of the past, etc; it is by virtue of the inflexible necessity to form and maintain a privileged minority, as long as it is not possible to assure real equality” (Trotsky). Until the disapp­earance of the state, until its re-absorption in a society that administers itself, the state continues to have this negative aspect; a necessary instrument of historic evolution, it constantly threatens to direct this evolution not to the advantage of the producers, but against them and towards their massacre.

F) The proletariat and the state

10) The specific physiognomy of the workers’ state devolves as follows:

-- on the one hand, as a weapon directed against the expropriated class, it reveals its ‘strong’ side

-- on the other hand, as an organism called forth not to consolidate a new system of exploitation but to abolish all exploitation, it uncovers its ‘weak’ side (because, in unfavourable conditions, it tends to become the pole of attraction for capitalist privileges). That’s why, whilst there cannot be antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, they can arise between the proletariat and the transitional state. With the foundation of the proletarian state, the historic relation­ship between the ruling class and the state finds itself modified. It is necessary to consider that:

a) the conquering of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the existence of the workers’ state, are conditions which are advantageous to the world proletariat, but not an irrevocable guarantee against any tendency to degeneration;

b) if the state is proletarian, this in no way means that there could be no need or possibility for the proletariat to enter into conflict with it, or that no opposition to state policies can be tolerated;

c) contrary to past states, the proletar­ian state cannot synthesize, concentrate in its apparatus, all the aspects of the dictatorship. The workers’ state is profoundly different from the unitary organ of the class and the organ which regroups the vanguard of the proletariat. This differentiation operates because the state, in spite of the appearance of its greater material power, has, from the political point of view, less possibility of action. It is many times more vulnerable to the enemy than the other workers’ organs. The proletariat can only compensate for this weakness by its class politics, its party and the workers’ councils through which it exercises an indispensable control over the state’s activities, develops its class consciousness, and ensures the defence of its interests. The active presence of these organisms is the condition for the state to remain proletarian. The foundation of the dictatorship resides not only in the fact that no interdiction can limit the activities of the workers’ councils and the party (proscription of violence within the class, permanent right to strike, autonomy of the councils and the party, freedom of tendencies in these organs), but also that these organs must have the means to resist an eventual metamorphosis of the state, should the latter tend not towards its disappearance, but towards the triumph of its despotic tendencies.

G) On the dictatorship and the tasks of the workers’ state

(11) The role and aim of capitalism determines the role and aim of its different state forms: to maintain oppression for the profit of the bourgeoisie. As for the proletariat, it is again the role and aim of the working class which will determine the role and aim of the proletarian state. But in this case, the policy of the state is no longer an indifferent element in determin­ing its role (as was the case for the bourgeois and all proceeding classes) but an element of the highest importance, on which will depend its basic function in the world revolution, and by definition, the conserva­tion of its proletarian character.

(12) A proletarian policy will direct economic policy towards communism only if that development is given an orientation diametrically opposed to that of capitalism, only if it aims for a progressive, constant raising of the living conditions of the masses. To the degree that the political situation allows, the proletariat must press for a constant reduction in unpaid labour, which, in consequence, will inevitably lead to the rhythm of accumulat­ion becoming considerably slower than that of the capitalist economy. Any other policy will necessarily lead to the transformation of the proletarian state into a new bourgeois state, following the pattern of events in Russia.

(13) In any case, accumulation cannot be based on the necessity to combat the econom­ic and military power of the capitalist states. The global revolution can only come out of the ability of the proletariat of all countries to fulfill its mission, out of the world-wide maturation of the political conditions for the insurrection. The working class cannot borrow from the bourgeoisie its vision of a “revolutionary war”. In the period of civil war the struggle will not be between proletarian states and capitalist states, but between the world proletariat and the international bourgeoisie. In the activity of the proletarian state, the economic and military spheres are necessarily secondary.

(14) The transitional state is essentially an instrument for political domination and cannot be a substitute for the international class struggle. The workers’ state must be considered a tool of the revolution, and never as a pole of concentration for it. If the proletariat follows the latter course, it will be forced to make compromises with its class enemies, whereas revolutionary necessity imperatively demands a ruthless struggle against all anti-proletarian groupings, even at the risk of aggravating the economic disorganization resulting from the revolution. Any other perspective, which takes as its point of departure so-called ‘realism’, or an apparent ‘law of unequal development’, can only undermine the foundations of the proletarian state, and lead to its transformation into a bourgeois state under the false guise of ‘socialism in one country’.

(15) The dictatorship of the proletariat must ensure that the forms and procedures for control by the masses are many and varied, so as to prevent any shadow of degeneration and deformation of soviet power. It must have the aim of continuously weeding out “the tares of bureaucracy” an evil excrescence which will inevitably accompany the period of transition. The safeguard of the revolution is the conscious activity of the working masses. The true political task of the proletariat lies in raising its own class consciousness, just as it transforms the consciousness of the whole of the labouring population. Compared to this task, the exercise of constraint through the policy and administrative organs of the workers’ state is secondary (and the proletariat must take care to limit its most pernicious effects). The proletariat must not lose sight of this: that “so long as (it) still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries.”

S, RC, Ry, M, P, JL, RJ, AF.

Life of the ICC:

General and theoretical questions:

From monetary crisis to the war economy

1946 reads

This report on the international situation is an effort to trace the basic politico-economic perspectives which will face the capitalist system on a world scale over the coming years. Rather than a detailed ana­lysis of the present economic and political conjuncture in even the major capitalist states -- analyses which are now forthcoming on a regular basis in the publications of the various territorial sections of the International Communist Current -- we will concentrate on indicating the broad lines, the fundamental axes, which will determine the course of the capitalist economy over the next years, and which will shape the political orientation of the various nat­ional bourgeoisies and the actions of the two imperialist blocs. In so doing we hope to elaborate a coherent perspective with which to guide the intervention of the. ICC in the increasingly decisive class battles which lie ahead; a perspective which will be one of the elements which will insure that the ICC can become an active factor in the development of proletarian class conscious­ness, can become a vital element in the proletarian storm which will uproot and destroy the capitalist state throughout the world and initiate the transition to communism.

Despite the triumphant proclamations of ‘recovery’ with which bourgeois politicians and statesmen have attempted to feed an increasingly hungry and impoverished world for the past two years, the global capital­ist economic crisis has relentlessly deep­ened. In the industrialized nations of the American bloc (the OECD), both the growth in real GNP and in exports has been declining since the beginning of 1977:

Percentage change, seasonally adjusted annual rates

*1977 est

Yet even these dismal figures do not begin to convey the catastrophic situation in which the economically weakest European countries like Britain, Italy, Spain, and Portugal now find themselves. Quasi-stagnant GNPs, a collapse of investment in new plant, and huge trade and balance of payments deficits have led to effective devaluation of their currencies, drastic falls in their foreign exchange reserves and burgeoning foreign debts. The result has been hyperinflation (Britain: 16-17% Italy: 21%; Spain: 30%; Portugal more than 30%) and massive unemployment (Britain: 1.5 million; Italy: 1.5 million; Spain: 1 million; Portugal: 500,000 - 18% officially). All four countries are virtually bankrupt, and are only being kept afloat by loans and credits which ultimately depend on a green light from the US. The bourgeoisies of these sick men of Europe no longer even speak of ‘recovery’ or ‘growth’; their new watchword is ‘stabilization’, the euphemism for the draconian austerity, de­flation and stagnation to which their eco­nomic weakness and the dictates of their creditors condemn them. Moreover the ranks of these sick men are now being joined by France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Canada, countries whose economic strength was unquestioned in bourgeois circles a few years ago, but which are now rapidly sinking into the quagmire of unmanageable trade and payments deficits, devaluations, mounting debts, hyper-inflation, and sky-rocketing unemployment, which have already claimed their weaker neighbours.

A look at the economic giants of the American bloc -- the US, West Germany, and Japan -- will quickly reveal the extreme fragility and grim prospects for even these seemingly strong economies. The apparent health of Germany and Japan -- with their fat trade surpluses and robust currencies -- rests almost exclusively on massive export drives and systematic dumping. The US, meanwhile, has benefitted from a reflation­ary package which has now run its course, and the fact that its trade deficit has been largely offset by huge invisible earnings (interest payments, profits, from foreign investments, capital transfers, etc) which accrue to the leader of the imperialist bloc. Indeed, despite their protestations that they would not indulge in a beggar-thy-neighbour policy to atten­uate the shock of the world crisis, the US, Germany and Japan have done precisely that, and have preserved a semblance of economic health only by deflecting the worst effects of the crisis onto the weaker nations of the bloc. However, with new investment down alarmingly, and with the trade deficit countries taking extreme steps to slash their imports, the prospects of the US, Germany and Japan achieving their planned -- for 1977 growth targets (US: 5.8%; Germany: 5%; Japan: 6.7%) and there­by reducing their already dangerously high unemployment (US: 6.7 million; Germany: 1.4 million; Japan: 1.4 million) let alone providing any sort of stimulus for their weaker ‘partners’, appears increasingly dim. Nor will any of the three giants take up the slack through new reflationary budgets at home, faced as they are with the spectre of galloping inflation, which is already again rapidly heading towards double digits in the US (6.4% and Japan (9.4%)

In the Russian bloc (COMECON) even the state planning agencies must now acknowledge the presence and growth of inflation and unemployment -- the unmistakable effects of capitalist production and its permanent crisis. Economic activity in the Russian bloc has been fuelled by $35-40 billion in loans by western banks over the past few years (part of the explosion of credit by the American bloc in a vain effort to com­pensate for the saturation of the world market). The Russian bloc has now launched a massive export drive, a frantic quest for markets, on the outcome of which the repayment of its huge loans depends. Yet not only does this export offensive occur at a time when the countries of the Ameri­can bloc are desperately moving to cut imports to the bone and when the countries of the ‘Third World’ hover on the brink of bankruptcy, it will also come to grief because of the barriers to additional loans (a result of both political and financial considerations) without which the Russian bloc cannot purchase the new technology which alone could make -- in conjunction with the planned attacks on the working class -- her commodities competitive on the world market. Thus, after a great burst of trade and exchanges with the American bloc between 1971-1976, the Russian bloc finds itself in an economic cul-de-sac.

The Third World -- including even its indus­trial powerhouses like South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, etc -- sinks deeper into a growing barbarism with each passing day. The nightmare world of hunger, disease, labour camps and begging to which decadent capitalism condemns the masses of humanity has already claimed countries constituting two thirds of the world’s population. The $78 billion in loans to the Third World in 1974-1976 have done practically nothing to even slow the rush of these economies towards total collapse (though they were a temporary palliative for the lack of effective demand which was condemning more and more of the world’s industrial apparatus to idleness). Yet given the complete bankruptcy of the Third World countries, whatever new funds are forthcoming -- on a greatly reduced scale -- will serve only to avert default on past loans and the resultant collapse of major western banks. The brutal austerity which the regimes of the Third World –‘socialist’, Marxist-Leninist, Nationalist, and Democratic -- are now in the process of imposing, in a desperate attempt to reduce the staggering trade deficit ($22 billion in 1976 for the non-oil developing countries with the OECD alone!) brought on by their dependence on raw material and agricultural exports, will be a death sentence to millions.

We can better understand why the perspective which faces world capital today is one of an inevitable fall in production and trade, if we look at the nature, bases and limits of the upturn in production and trade during the winter of 1975-76, following the excep­tionally sharp downward plunge of 1975, and the spurt in output (though not in trade) which occurred this past winter, following last summer’s lull. The collapse of 1975 was halted primarily by hastily devised reflationary budgets and a new massive explo­sion of credit, the creation of fictitious capital, which could for a short time once again, offset the saturation of markets which underlies capitalism’s death crisis. To these two factors must be added the momen­tary shot in the arm contributed by the inventory re-stocking which followed the run-down of stocks as production plummeted, as well as falling savings by the middle classes which provoked a mini-boom in con­sumer durables (cars, etc) and which owed less to any confidence in recovery than to a well-placed conviction in the permanence of inflation. Both of these last two fac­tors helped fuel the OECD countries 7-8% growth in real GNP achieved in the winter of 1975-76, while only the credit explosion and governmental fiscal stimulation under­pinned the much more fragile upturn this winter.

Today, the barriers to a continuation of the credit explosion -- without which world trade will shrink -- is apparent in the growing threat of default by the biggest borrowers like Zaire, Peru, Mexico and Brazil, and in the gaping trade and payments deficits which plague the Third World, the Russian bloc and the weaker countries of the American bloc. The sources of credit are drying up as the capacity of the debtor countries to repay their recent loans has been stretched to the breaking point. New loans to the countries of the Third World -- hesitantly provided by the IMF rather than the overextended ‘private’ banks -- will serve to assure repayment of past loans and their service, and not to finance a contin­ued flow of commodities. Moreover, such loans will be contingent on strict controls over the debtor countries’ economies and the requirement that they reduce or eliminate their payments deficits by drastically slashing their imports. To this consider­able pressure which will contract world trade must be added the politico-financial limita­tions to a new round of massive loans to the Russian bloc, without which trade between the two blocs will decline. Finally, the trade deficit countries of the American bloc have been driven to the verge of bankruptcy by their mounting debts and their payments deficits. Having reached the limits of their credit-worthiness, and facing economic collapse, these countries must either opt for protectionism and autarky or accept IMF control and discipline -- either of which means strict limitations on imports and a further contraction of world trade.

Shrinking world trade cannot be offset by a sharp rise in demand within the industrial heartlands of capitalism. The obstacles to a continuation (let alone acceleration) of the fiscal stimulation which has been practically the sole basis for a higher level of demand in the industrialized coun­tries of the American bloc, preclude the launching of any ambitious ‘recovery’ pro­grammes and the introduction of reflationary budgets or policies adequate to generate a new spurt in industrial output. In those countries wracked by hyper-inflation, so long as political conditions permit (the level of class struggle) cuts in ‘public’ spending, compression of the money supply, in other words, deflation is a necessity. In the ‘strong’ economies (the US, Germany, Japan) the bourgeoisie is extremely hesitant to reflate lest it unleash the hyperinfla­tion which its array of austerity measures have for the moment kept at bay.

If governmental fiscal stimulation can no longer be utilized on the past scale to prevent a fall in production, the collapse will be all the more devastating because of the present catastrophic decline in new investments in industrial plant. The bour­geoisie’s unwillingness to invest is linked to the prodigious and continuing fall in the rate of profit since world capital again plunged into open crisis around 1967. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the situation of German capital (which has cer­tainly weathered the first assaults of the open crisis better than practically any other) where the average rate of profit after taxes was 6% in 1960-67, 5.3% in 1967-71, and 4.1% in 1972-75. The fall in the rate of profit has accelerated as a result of the growth in unproductive expenditures by the capitalist state as it tries to counter­act the effects of the saturation of the world market and contain the class antagon­isms brought to a fever pitch by the deepen­ing crisis. This, and the high interest rates with which the bourgeoisie desperately seeks to combat the hyper-inflation which its unproductive -- but necessary -- expendi­tures have generated, have depressed invest­ments (particularly in Department I, the production of the means of production) to the point where a collapse of production looms menacingly on the horizon.

The failure of the different governments’ efforts to stimulate their economies and overcome the effects of the crisis with alternating ‘recovery’ and austerity pro­grammes and budgets, the persistence and worsening of galloping inflation together with recession, of an explosion of credit together with a devastating fall in invest­ments, of dwindling profit rates together with unprecedented levels of ‘public’ spending, of massive unemployment together with huge budget deficits, all demonstrate the absolute bankruptcy of Keynesianism, of the reliance on fiscal and monetary policy, which has been the cornerstone of bourgeois economic policy since the reappearance of the open crisis in 1967. The impossibility of stimulating the economy without setting off hyper-inflation, the impossibility of controlling inflation without a dizzying fall in production and profits, the increa­singly short gaps between the swings of recession and galloping inflation, in fact, the permanent and simultaneous character of recession and inflation have shattered the economic theories (sic) on which the bourgeoisie has based its policies. The impotence of governmental fiscal and mone­tary policy before a new plunge in world trade and production, impose on the bour­geoisie a new economic policy to face its death crisis.

The bourgeoisie must attempt to escape the breakdown of Keynesian policies by recourse to a more and more totalitarian and direct control over the whole economy by the state apparatus. And if important factions of the bourgeoisie still hesitate to admit that Keynesianism has had its day, its more in­telligent representatives have no doubts about what the alternative will be. The leading spokesmen for the US’s dominant financial-industrial groups put it this way:

“If fiscal and monetary policy can bring the economy back toward balance, this will be all they need. If the broad policies fail, however, government, labour and business can all expect (state) intervention on a scale for which there is no precedent in this country.” (Business Week, 4 April, 1977)

Revolutionaries must be absolutely clear about the nature of the steps which capi­talism’s permanent crisis forces each national faction of the bourgeoisie to take, about the thrust of state capitalism, a new phase in whose evolution faces our class:

“State capitalism is not an attempt to resolve the essential contradictions of capitalism as a system for the exploita­tion of labour power, but the manifesta­tion of these contradictions. Each grouping of capitalist interests tries to deflect the effects of the crisis of the system onto a neighbouring, competing grouping, by appropriating it as a market and field for exploitation. State capitalism is born of the neces­sity for this grouping to carry out its concentration and to put external markets under its control. The economy is there­fore transformed into a war economy.” (‘The Evolution of Capitalism and the New Perspective’, 1952, reprinted in Bulletin D’Etude et de Discussion of Revolution Internationale, no.8, p.9).

The war economy which is arising on the shambles of Keynesianism is in no sense a way out of the world crisis, it is not an economic policy which can solve the contra­dictions of capitalism, nor provide the basis for a new stage of capitalist dev­elopment. The war economy can only be understood in terms of the inevitability of another inter-imperialist war if the proletariat does not put an end to the reign of the bourgeoisie; it is the indis­pensable framework for the bourgeoisie’s preparations for the conflagration which the blind laws of capitalism and the inexor­able deepening of the crisis impose on it. The only function of the war economy is... war: It’s raison d’être is the systematic and efficient destruction of the means of production and the production of the means of destruction -- the very logic of capital­ist barbarism.

Only the institution of a war economy can now prevent the capitalist productive appar­atus from grinding to a halt. In order to establish a full-fledged war economy, how­ever, each national faction of capital must:

1. subject the whole apparatus of produc­tion and distribution to the totalitar­ian control of the state, and direct the economy towards a single goal -- war.

2. drastically reduce the consumption of all social classes and strata.

3. massively increase the output and degree of exploitation of the one class which is the source of all value, of all wealth -- the proletariat.

The enormity and difficulty of such an undertaking is the cause of the growing political crisis in which the bourgeoisie of each country now finds itself enmeshed. The totalitarian organization of the economy and its direction to a single goal often produce bitter struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie, as those factions whose particular interests will be sacrificed fight against the juggernaut of statifica­tion. The reduction in overall consumption which the war economy necessitates provokes incessant turmoil and bitter opposition within the ranks of the middle strata, petty-bourgeoisie and peasants. But it is the assault on the proletariat which -- be­cause it risks unleashing a generalized class war -- is not only the most difficult task for the bourgeoisie to accomplish in the present conjuncture, but the veritable key to the constitution of a war economy. The war economy absolutely depends on the physical and/or ideological submission of the proletariat to the state, on the degree of control that the state has over the working class.

The war economy in the present epoch, how­ever, is not simply established on a nat­ional scale, but also on the scale of an imperialist bloc. Incorporation into one of the two imperialist blocs -- each one dominated by a mammoth continental state capitalism, the US and Russia -- is a nece­ssity which not even the bourgeoisies of formerly great imperialist powers like Britain, France, Germany and Japan can resist. The powerful drive by the US and Russia to co-ordinate, organize and direct the war-making potential of their blocs intensifies the political crisis of each national bourgeoisie as the pressure to bow to the requirements for the consolida­tion of the imperialist bloc on the one hand and the need to defend the national capital interest on the other, generate irresistible and growing tensions.

We shall now, in turn, look at the specific problems which are faced and the actual measures being taken by the bourgeoisie in the US and throughout the American bloc, and by the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc, to organize their war economies, to over­come the different types of resistance this generates, and to resolve their poli­tical crises. We will then focus on the sharpening inter-imperialist conflicts throughout the world which are relentlessly, though gradually, leading the imperialist blocs towards world war. Finally, we will indicate the perspectives for the intensi­fication of the class struggle of the prole­tariat, indicating the impediments to and the tendencies towards generalized class war.

The United States and the American bloc

In his first months as President of the US, Jimmy Carter has dealt a stinging rebuke to the orthodox Keynesians within his adminis­tration by scrapping his original reflationary budget (in eliminating the proposed tax rebates and new investment tax credits, Carter presented a budget which is less expansionary than the one proposed by his Republican predecessor, Gerald Ford!). But if Carter and his team have seen the limits of Keynesianism, they are certainly not beating a retreat to the ‘fiscal conserva­tism’ and monetarism which many Republicans still insist is the only governmental answer to the crisis and to the spectre of gallop­ing inflation. The Carter Administration has seen the utter futility of trying to stem the crisis by relying on fiscal and monetary policies (stimulative or restric­tive), and is beginning to move the US into a new phase of war economy and state totali­tarianism.

The one element in the American budget which will grow at a prodigious rate is armaments research and production. The probable go ahead -- depending on the outcome of the SALT talks -- for the MK-12A nuclear warhead (the ‘silo-buster’) and the B-1 bomber, is only the beginning of a new explosion of armaments which will increasingly become the hub of economic activity. Furthermore the Carter Administration’s recent initia­tives to subject arms exports more directly to American strategic interests, and to limit the spread of nuclear technology which produces plutonium in a form suitable for bomb-making, are not moves to limit armaments but rather part of an overall policy to consolidate the American bloc around the exclusive domination of the US and to subject weaponry and its development solely to the control, will, and aims of American imperialism.

The Carter Administration’s resolute move towards a war economy, and its acceleration of the tendency towards state capitalism, can be clearly seen in its energy policy, its proposals for expansion of the scope and scale of commodity stockpiling, and its steps towards centralizing world trade. The necessities of a war economy have led the government to inaugurate a national energy policy through a network of state agencies, and the proposal to create a super agency headed by a national energy czar. The American state intends to dictate the price of energy, the kinds of energy to be utili­zed, and the quantities of energy to be allocated to the different regions, and to the various types of production and consumption. The energy policy’s emphasis on conservation is the cutting edge of the drive to restrict the consumption of all classes and strata (though primarily the working class), the brutal austerity which is basic for a war economy. The development of new sources of energy to both assure America’s energy ‘independence’ in time of war, and to make the other countries of the bloc totally dependent on the US, will proceed through the statification of the energy industry. Complete statification of energy is occurring in two ways. First, the American state directly owns most of the remaining energy resources of the country:

“The best prospects for oil and gas now lie offshore in federal waters. Coal production is shifting to the West, where the government controls most of the mineral rights, Even the nation’s uranium lies largely in public hands.” (Business Week, 4 April, 1977)

Second, the development of nuclear techno­logy and the infrastructure for coal lique­faction demands a state plan and state capital, as even the leading spokesmen for America’s monopolies realize:

“To develop and implement such technology on the necessary grand scale dictates major economic adjustments -- for instance much higher fuel prices and massive capital formation. Only the government seems capable of directing such a leviathan effort.” (Ibid.)

The Carter team is also considering a mass­ive expansion of the American government’s commodity stockpiles, by adding ‘economic’ stocks to the $7.6 billion strategic military reserve of 93 commodities. The stra­tegic stockpile is intended to ensure sup­plies in case of war. Economic stocks of key raw materials will permit the American state to shape domestic plans, and to put pressure on foreign producers to cut prices, through its capacity to release stockpiled commodities onto the market.

Finally, the American state is in the fore­front of the movement to cartelize world trade. In contrast to the international cartels which dominated the world market in the epoch of monopoly capitalism, and which were established by ‘private’ trusts, a new type of cartelization appropriate to the epoch of state capitalism and war eco­nomy is emerging. The cartels presently being organized to set and regulate the prices of important raw materials, and to determine the share of key markets to be allotted to the different national capitals, are negotiated and operated directly by the various state apparatuses.

Two types of cartels are being pushed by the Carter Administration. The first are commodity cartels which involve both exporting and importing nations, and which will determine the acceptable price range for a commodity and regulate the movement of prices through the use of buffer stocks in the hands of either the national govern­ments or the cartel. The US is now in the process of organizing such cartels for sugar and wheat, which may be the forerunners of cartels for other raw materials and agri­cultural products. Such state organized commodity cartels would attempt to stabilize raw materials prices, a basic element in the drawing up of an overall economic plan, and in counteracting the fall in the rate of profit, as well as facilitating a ‘cheap food’ strategy, which would lower the value of labour power and thereby smooth the way to a compression of the wages of the working class -- all of which are essential ingred­ients of the war economy.

The second type of cartel is a direct res­ponse to a shrinking world market, and in­volves state planning not for expansion, but for contraction of world trade. What is involved are agreements between exporting and importing states to assign quotas or shares of a national market for specific commodities to the several competing natio­nal capitals. The US has recently arranged what it euphemistically calls ‘orderly marketing agreements’ with Japan on special steels and TV sets (this latter will reduce Japanese exports to the US by 40%), and is now in the process of negotiating agreements to divide up world markets for textiles, garments, shoes and basic steel. These cartels represent Washington’s alternative to an orgy of protectionism and autarky on the part of each national capital within the American bloc, an organized and co­ordinated shrinking of markets which is intended to preserve the cohesion of the bloc under the impact of the world crisis.

As an inseparable part of its steps to con­solidate a war economy, the Carter Adminis­tration has brandished a new war ideology -- the crusade for ‘human rights’. In the epoch of imperialist world wars; when vic­tory depends primarily on production, when every worker is a ‘soldier’, an ideology capable of binding the whole of production to the state and instilling a willingness to produce and sacrifice is a necessity for capitalism. Moreover, in an era when wars are not fought between nations, but between world imperialist blocs, national chauvinism alone is no longer a sufficient ideology. As the bourgeoisie prepares for a new world butchery, the struggle for human rights is replacing anti-communism in the ideological arsenal of the ‘democratic’ imperialisms of the American bloc as they begin to mobi­lize their populations for war with the ‘totalitarian dictatorship’ of the Russian bloc (all the more so as countries like China which are being incorporated into the American bloc have ‘communist’ regimes and as the participation of ‘Communist’ parties in the governments of several West European countries is foreseen). Behind Jimmy Carter’s moralistic appeals for the universal recognition of human rights, American swords are being sharpened.

The organization of a fully developed war economy in the US is not taking place, however, without furious resistance on the part of many powerful bourgeois interests. In particular, the Mid-Western farm bloc and agri-business oppose what they perceive as a ‘cheap food’ strategy; the steel, textile, shoe and many other industries are militantly protectionist, seeing the govern­ment’s concern with the cohesion and stability of the world imperialist bloc as a betrayal of American industry; the South-Western oil and gas interests violently object to the Carter energy policy. All of these groupings are organizing to defend their particularistic interests by resisting the stranglehold of a leviathan state over the whole economy. Moreover, they are trying to mobilize the legions of small and medium capitalists (for whom state capital­ism is a death sentence) as well as the disenchanted middle classes to resist the tide of statification. Nonethless, it is the interests of the global national capi­tal -- which absolutely requires a war economy -- which will win out in any intra-­bourgeois struggle, and it is those factions of the bourgeoisie which most closely re­flect those interests which will ultimately dictate the orientation of the capitalist state and determine its policies.

Because of the ever-widening gap between the relatively increasing economic weight of the US and the lessening economic stren­gth of Europe and Japan, the US has the capacity to determine, to dictate, the eco­nomic priorities and orientation of other countries in its bloc. Moreover, with the intensifications of the crisis in America itself, the US will increasingly have to deflect the worst effects of the crisis onto Europe and Japan (within the limits that do not destroy the overall cohesion of the bloc). The US is now implementing a policy of putting Europe on rations. The manner in which American capital is imposing austerity on the bankrupt countries of Europe is through its capacity to grant or withhold the loans without which Europe faces economic ruin, and therefore to compel the sickmen of the continent to place control of their economies virtually in the hands of their American creditor. Unlike the 1920s when desperately needed American loans were largely provided by ‘private’ banks, today, -- under the prevailing conditions of state capitalism -- the bulk of the credits are channeled through state or semi-state institutions, like the Treasury, the Federal Reserve System, or the Washington controlled International Monetary Fund.

The plans of American capital on the one hand to drastically reduce consumption in Europe, and on the other hand to more firmly commit Europe to the imperatives of a war economy constructed on the scale of the whole American imperialist bloc, can be seen in the recent IMF negotiations for loans to Britain, Italy and Portugal. As a con­dition for a $3.9 billion loan, the IMF demanded that Britain severely reduce govern­ment spending and place strict limits on the growth of the money supply, in other words, the imposition of brutal deflationary measures. At the same time the IMF insisted that Britain guarantee that no broad or permanent import controls would be imposed and that no currency restrictions would be instituted, guarantees that eliminate the possibility of protectionist or autarkic measures which could splinter the bloc or jeopardize American interests. In the case of Italy, the IMF’s conditions for a $530 million loan were a start at dismantling the indexation system which automatically makes some adjustments in wages as prices rise, limits and controls over national and local government spending, and an IMF veto on expansion of the money supply. Portugal’s request for a $1.5 billion loan from the IMF was met by a demand for a 25% devalua­tion of the escudo so as to slash real wages and reduce imports (20% of which are foodstuffs); in the event, the Portuguese devalued by 15%, and the American vaults have begun to open.

As an integral part of its policy to assure the stability of the American bloc as a whole, the US aims to distribute the impact of the world crisis more evenly throughout its bloc (America aside), by imposing on West Germany and Japan a policy of aiding and propping up the economies of those European countries which are near collapse. Thus, the US is insisting that West Germany and Japan reflate their economies to provide markets for the weaker countries, and significantly reduce their exports -- this latter in part to be accomplished through an upvaluation of the mark and the yen. The rise in the value of the German and Japanese currencies will also help to stem the export offensive towards America, and reduce the competitiveness of the US’s two major commercial rivals. This policy has begun to bear its first fruits as the Fukuda government in Japan let the yen rise by more than 7% against the dollar between January and April.

While one of the bases of America’s strangle­hold over all the economies of her bloc is her overwhelming financial power, her ulti­mate control over vital energy resources is another. It is Washington’s Pax Americana in the Middle East that insures that Europe and Japan will have the oil on which the operation of their productive apparatus now depends. The US’s firm opposition to the development and spread of fast breeder nu­clear reactors which produce their own plutonium as a source of fuel is in part due to the fact that such technology could potentially make the European and Japanese economies independent of America as far as energy is concerned. In giving up the development of fast breeder reactors, how­ever, the US itself sacrifices nothing, since its supplies of uranium still make the utilization of nuclear power compatible with America’s goal of energy independence.

For Europe and Japan, though, nuclear energy which depends on uranium as a fuel condemns them to permanent absolute dependence on the US in energy matters.

While the US puts Europe on rations, and dictates austerity to the countries of its bloc, there is one area where America dem­ands a massive increase in output and spending: armaments.The sharpening of inter-imperialist conflict and the necessi­ties of a war economy has already led the US to insist that its NATO allies increase their military budgets. The European and Japanese economies will henceforth be in­creasingly organized for the production of guns not butte!

The need to impose a draconian austerity to accelerate the tendency towards state capitalism, to unleash an onslaught against the proletariat (under conditions of growing class struggle), and to adjust its policies to the dictates of American capital, have led the bourgeoisies of Europe and Japan into the jaws of a devastating political crisis. The nature of the tasks which these bourgeoisies must try to accomplish all dictate a course which, gradually or abruptly (depending on the speed with which a given economy collapses or on the acute­ness of the class struggle), will bring the left to power. In the present conjunc­ture, it is left governments dominated by the Socialist parties1, and based on the trade union organizations, or popular fronts which include the Stalinist parties, which are best adapted to the needs of the bourgeoisie.

Because it is not inextricably tied to ‘private capital’, to particularistic in­terests within the national capital, and to anachronistic factions of the bourgeoi­sie (which characterizes the right), the left can best impose the totalitarian and centralized control of the state over the whole economy, and the drastic reduction in the consumption of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie, which are hallmarks of the war economy. Because of its working class electoral support and mass base, and its ‘socialist’ ideology, only the left -- faced with a combative proletariat which is becoming the axis of political life -- has a chance to derail the class struggle and to bring about the savage reduction of the proletariat’s standard of living, the in­tensification of its exploitation, and its ideological submission to the state -- on all of which the lethal success of the war economy depends. Because of its Atlanticism, its ‘internationalism’, the left (at least the Socialist parties and trade unions) is also best suited to further the consolida­tion of a war economy on the scale of the American bloc as a whole.

This convergence of a left government and the interests of American imperialism can be seen, for example, in the efforts of the US to impose different economic policies on the weaker and the stronger economies of its bloc. In the weaker economies (Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal), the US insists on austerity and deflation, resistance to which is crystallizing around the right parties linked to ‘private’ capi­tal and to the anachronistic and retrograde sectors of the bourgeoisie who need massive government subsidies, easy credit and refla­tion of the home market to stay afloat. In contrast, it is the left-of-centre and left parties which are prepared to accept the IMF’s ‘recommendations’ and impose the American diktat. Even the left’s policy of nationalization, which is integral to a war economy (such as nationalization of aircraft and shipbuilding in Britain, or nationaliza­tion of Dassault and the electronics monopolies proposed by the Programme Commun in France), will not damage American interests, and indeed can facilitate American control on a direct state-to-state level. In Germany and Japan, the US demands reflation, upvaluation of the currency and limitations on exports, all of which are generating considerable opposition on the part of factions of the bourgeoisie coalescing around the right parties which are extremely reluc­tant to take any steps to limit national competitiveness on the world market, and to adjust the interests of the national capital to the interests of the bloc. In contrast, it is the moderate left (the SPD in Germany, Democratic Socialists and Eda wing of the SP in Japan) which is most amenable to co­ordinating the interests of the national capital with the demands of America.

American capital clearly prefers Labour to the Tories in Great Britain, and the Social Democrats to the Christian Democrats in Germany. In Portugal, Soares and the Socialists are better adapted to American interests than Sa Carneiro and Jaime Neves. In Spain, Washington wants a government led by Suarez with the direct or indirect par­ticipation of Felipe Gonzalez and the PSOE, while a government led by Fraga Iribarne and the Alianza Popular would be intolerable. In France, a government based on Mitterand and the SP is preferred by the Americans to one led by Chirac. Even in Italy, an Andreotti-Berlinguer combination is better suited to American needs than a government led by Fanfani and the right-wing of the Christian Democrats.

The right, then, is more and more incapable of adopting the necessary economic measures imposed by the deepening crisis, as well as being inadequate to face the proletarian threat, and increasingly hostile to American interests, while the left is the only vehicle through which the bourgeoisie can realisti­cally try to establish a war economy in the present conjuncture. Yet this ineluctable movement of the bourgeoisie to the left seems to be contradicted by the outcome of recent elections in many of the countries of the American bloc. In a number of countries, there has been a very pronounced electoral trend to the right: victories of the right in general elections in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden in 1976; impressive gains for the CDU/CSU in the German general elec­tion that same year; the considerable shift to the right in Portugal between the April 1975 elections for a Constitutent Assembly and the Parliamentary elections a year later; sweeping victories for the Tories in both Parliamentary by-elections and local elections in Britain this year; the triumph of the Social Christians in Belgium’s general election this past April.

This electoral trend to the right is fuelled by a wave of bitterness and discontent on the part of small and medium capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie and the middle classes, all of whom have seen their standard of living drastically fall over the past few years. Because the capitalist state has hesitated to unleash too direct an attack on the proletariat out of fear of prema­turely sparking a generalized class war or even a mass strike wave for which it is not yet prepared, the middle classes -- more fragmented and not a direct threat to the bourgeois order -- have been the object of many of the first concerted austerity mea­sures. As a result, the middle strata and its frustrations have momentarily become the axis of politics in a number of countries, and this has provoked the present electoral renaissance on the right. However, to prevent the impending economic collapse and establish a real war economy, the bour­geoisie -- whatever its hesitations -- must quickly focus its attack directly on the proletariat and attempt to deflect the mounting class struggle this will unleash. And as the working class becomes the axis of politics, the electoral trend will soon reflect the basic course of the bourgeoisie: a left turn.

Yet even this short-term electoral shift to the right has not altered or even slowed the bourgeoisie’s resolute move to the left in the constitution of its governments (thereby again demonstrating the purely ornamental nature of Parliaments and the solely mystificatory character of elections in the epoch of capitalist decadence). Were the bourgeoisie looking for an opening to effect a governmental shift to the right (as the leftists insist), the recent electoral trend would have provided it. Instead, the bourgeoisie has largely dis­regarded the results of the elections in constituting or perpetuating a governmental team which expresses its present need to base itself on the left parties and the trade unions. Thus, in Britain, where a general election would almost certainly return a Tory government, the bourgeoisie is holding on until the electoral trend again shifts to the left, and meanwhile to avoid a premature election is propping up the Labour government with the votes of the Liberal Party. In Portugal, despite the line-up in Parliament, the bourgeoisie insists on a purely Socialist government. In Belgium, where the election results have made a right-of-centre Social Christian-Liberal government possible, the bourgeoisie instead is determined to constitute a left-­of-centre Social Christian-Socialist govern­ment with a powerful trade union base.

With the clear perspective of a turn to the left by the bourgeoisie we must now look at the nature of the Stalinist parties today. The participation of the Stalinists in government will increasingly become a nece­ssity for the bourgeoisies of some of the weakest European countries (Italy, France, Spain) inasmuch as the Stalinists are best equipped to impose the essential austerity measures on the working class and to derail the class struggle. However, Stalinist participation in the government provokes furious -- often violent -- opposition on the part of powerful factions of the national bourgeoisie and resistance and distrust on the part of the US. We must be clear about the real character of Stalinism, its dis­tinctive features as a bourgeois party, so as to understand what the sources of this opposition and distrust are, and to what extent they may impede the Stalinists’ accession to power.

First, the Stalinist parties are not anti national parties or agents of Moscow. All bourgeois parties (right and left), what­ever their orientation on the international arena may be, are nationalist parties.

“In the epoch of imperialism, the defence of the national interest can only take place within the enlarged framework of an imperialist bloc. It is not as a fifth column, as a foreign agent, but as a function of its immediate or long term interests, properly understood, that a national bourgeoisie opts for and adheres to one of the world blocs which exists. It is around this choice for one bloc or the other bloc that the division and internal struggle within the bourgeoisie takes place; but this division always takes place on the basis of a single concern and a single common goal: the national interest, the interest of the national bourgeoisie.” (Inter­nationalisme, no.30, 1948)

Nationalism, is, and always has been, the basis of the Stalinist parties, and when they opted for the Russian bloc in the 1940s when the division of Europe between the two world imperialist blocs was taking place, they were no more a fifth column of Moscow than the Social Democrats or Christian Democrats were a fifth column of Washington: what divided these bourgeois parties was the question of incorporation into which imperialist bloc would best serve the national capital’s vital interests.

In the present conjuncture, however, when a change of blocs by any of the Western European countries or Japan is hardly possible short of war or -- at the very least -- a dramatic and fundamental change in the world balance between the two imper­ialist camps, no faction of the bourgeoisie which realistically expects to come to power can seek incorporation into the Rus­sian bloc. In this sense “Eurocommunism” is the recognition by the Stalinists that the interests of their national capitals today precludes a change of blocs. The na­tionalism of the Stalinist parties in these countries now takes the form of support for protectionist responses to the deepening economic crisis, and a commitment to what is still only an embryonic tendency towards autarky. If this orientation on the part of the Stalinists does not call into question the incorporation of their countries into the American bloc, it nonetheless goes counter to the plans of American capital to more closely integrate the different coun­tries of the bloc in a mammoth war economy under the absolute control of Washington. Here, then, is one of the bases for America’s continuing distrust of the Stalinists, and her preference for the Socialist parties, for whom the vital interests of the national capital demand the most complete adjustment of national policies to the overall needs of the bloc.

But it is not its support for autarkic poli­cies -- which in any case it shares with the extreme right -- which is the most distinct­ive characteristic of Stalinism, and which accounts for the ferocity with which it is opposed by other factions of the national bourgeoisie. The Stalinist parties, whatever their present democratic and pluralist phraseology, are the exponents of the most complete and extreme form of state cap­italism, of the totalitarian and direct state control over every aspect of production and distribution, of the single party state, and the complete militarization of society. Un­like the other bourgeois parties (including the Socialists) the Stalinists have no ties whatsoever to ‘private’ capital. Whereas other factions of the bourgeoisie support a greater or lesser fusion of ‘private’ capital and state capital, Stalinists in power would mean the extinction of ‘pri­vate’ capital and with it all of the other bourgeois parties. This is the basis for the unrelenting fear and hostility of other bourgeois factions towards the Stalinists; and it explains many of the reservations of American imperialism, which still exercises much of its control over its ‘allies’ not yet directly on a state-­to-state basis, but through the links of ‘private’ capital -- links which Stalinism would shatter.

It is for these reasons that both the US and the other parties of the bourgeoisie in Europe and Japan are determined to keep a tight rein on the Stalinists, even as the worsening economic and political situation moves them closer to some kind of direct participation in the government in a vain effort to stabilize the crumbling bourgeois order. Yet as both the economic and poli­tical situation continues to deteriorate, and as the need for the most thoroughgoing war economy asserts itself, there will be more and more of a complete convergence of the vital needs of the national capital and the naked programme of Stalinism.

The Russian bloc

The permanent crisis of world capitalism condemns the Russian bloc to face a parti­cularly acute problem: its extreme weakness and enormous material disadvantages as it contemplates the intensification of the commercial struggle with the American bloc, and behind it the growing prospect of a military struggle for a redivision of the world market. The countries of the Russian bloc must try to compensate for the extremely low productivity of their labour power, the backwardness of their productive appara­tus, with a far greater dependence on the extraction of absolute surplus value than their competitors in the American bloc. Yet even the most drastic lowering of wages, massive speed-ups, and the extension of the working day -- the barrier to which can be seen in the resurgent combativity of the proletariat -- would not succeed in making Russian capital competitive with its rivals on the shrinking world market. Whilst it is true that surplus value is solely the product of the living labour newly added during the productive process of variable capital, both the mass and the rate of surplus value absolutely depend on the level of machinery and technology which the workers set in motion, on the constant capital en­gaged in the productive process. It is for this reason that the competitiveness of the Russian bloc is integrally linked to the acquisition of advanced machinery and technology, which under prevailing conditions can only be got from the American bloc -- by purchase or conquest.

One of the differences between the autarkic ‘socialism’ of Stalin and the mercantile ‘socialism’ of Brezhnev is that under condi­tions of an ongoing redivision of the world market and the establishment of new imper­ialist constellations (1939-1949), Stalin sought to overcome Russia’s backwardness first through the military conquest, looting, and shipment to Russia of the more advanced industrial plant of Germany, Danubian Europe and Manchuria, and then through the direct incorporation of these areas into the orbit of Russian imperialism; while under the momentary conditions of relative stabilization between the world imperialist blocs (at least as concerns the most industrialized areas), Brezhnev has tried to compensate for Russian back­wardness through trade and the massive purchase of Western technology. However, mercantile ‘socialism’ has now reached an impasse. Mounting trade deficits, which are the grim testimony to the continuing un-competitiveness of Russian capital on the world market, have made the purchase of technology from the American bloc com­pletely dependent on loans and credits. But, the burgeoning foreign debt of the Russian bloc, in conjunction with its trade deficits, is making a massive new round of loans too financially risky for western banks to undertake. To this must be added the politico-military factors which will increa­singly militate against a continuing flow of funds and technology from the American bloc to the COMECON countries.

The deepening economic crisis is intensi­fying economic competition between the blocs (particularly in the Third World, where Russia has a trade surplus, and where machines and technology bought from the West will be indispensable to her export offensive), and sharpening inter-imperialist conflicts. In response, American imperialism (as part of the consolidation of a war economy on the scale of its bloc) will ruthlessly subordinate short-term trade considerations to longer term political and strategic objectives, which will lead to a slackening of commercial exchanges between the blocs. As a result, conquest and war will finally be the only way for Russian imperialism to try to overcome the technical backwardness of its productive apparatus; and from the shambles of mercan­tile ‘socialism’ and its policy of detente, an up-dated version of the autarkic ‘social­ism’ of yesterday will again arise on Russian soil.

The present strategic and tactical superior­ity of the Warsaw Pact over NATO along the line that divides the two imperialist camps in Central Europe should not obscure the overwhelming material inferiority of the Russian bloc should it attempt to seize the West European industrial heartland. Marxism demonstrates the primacy of economic over politico-military factors in any clash be­tween capitalist states; in the final ana­lysis economic superiority must be trans­lated into military superiority, as the two inter-imperialist world wars demonstrated. The very superiority of the productive apparatus of the American bloc, which ultimately leaves Russian imperialism no choice but a war of conquest if it is not to be consigned to economic extinction by the American be­hemoth, is also the reason why American imperialism holds all the high cards in its game of death with its Russian rival. The Russian bourgeoisie faces the dilemma that to make war successfully you must first have economic superiority, while to achieve economic superiority in the epoch of capi­talist decadence you must first make war. The only way the Russian bloc can hope to tilt the balance somewhat as it is led to prepare for world war, is to compensate for its economic inferiority with a more efficient organization of its war economy, a more total commitment of all its resources -- human and machine -- to the direct necessi­ties of war production.

The extreme forms of state capitalism in the countries of the Russian bloc -- which are the result of their economic weakness -- should not lead us to conclude that a well organized war economy has already been established there. The chaotic situation in the production and distribution of food­stuffs, whose efficient organization is vital to a war economy so as to feed the producers and wielders of weapons as cheaply as possible, and so devote the bulk of the available labour, tools and raw materials to the production of the machines of war, will indicate the magnitude of the problem now faced by the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc. The prevalence of small and ineffi­cient ‘private’ farms (85% of agricultural production in Poland) and ‘private’ plots on collective farms (as much as 50% of the income of the Russian Kolkhozian comes from the sale of crops from ‘private’ plots), as well as the flourishing free and black markets in foodstuffs, means that the state does not yet have the totalitarian control over Department II, the production of the means of consumption, or the distribution network, which is essential to a war economy. The subjugation of the peasantry and the complete control of the agricultural sector by the leviathan state, as well as the elim­ination of the free and black markets are formidable tasks that face the bourgeoisie of the Russian bloc over the next few years.

Even in industry, the quasi-totality of which is nationalized in the Russian bloc, there are significant obstacles to the consolidation of a war economy. The decen­tralization of industry and the autonomy of the enterprise, which was a concomitant of mercantile ‘socialism’, must first be eliminated if Department I is to be centrally organized around the goal of armaments production. Yet such an undertaking will generate clashes within the bourgeosie it­self as managers and directors of particular factories and trusts will try to preserve their prerogatives.

The need for a more unified and autarkic economic order (directed by Moscow) on the scale of the whole bloc is also exacerbating tensions within each national bourgeoisie over the precise manner in which the inter­ests of the national capital will be recon­ciled with the demands of Russian imperia­lism. Given the prevailing politico-military situation, no significant faction of the bourgeoisie in any of the COMECON countries can seriously challenge its nation’s incorporation into the Russian bloc. Nonetheless, there are serious divergences between those factions of the bourgeoisie in each country which seek to expand trade with the West and encourage the investment of Western capital, so as to stimulate the development of purely national industries, and other factions for whom the interests of the national capital demands the orientation of economic life more exclusively around the overall needs of the bloc and the construction of a unified war economy. The overwhelming politico-military weight of Russian imperialism in Eastern Europe will be directed to assuring that it is these latter factions which win out in this intra-bourgeois clash.

The enormity of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc however, really manifests itself in its very halting steps to contain the threat of a combative proletariat. The depth of the economic crisis and the necessities of a war economy require a drastic lowering of the already abysmal living standards and working condi­tions of the proletariat; yet the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie perfected during the depths of the counter-revolution when the working class was pulverized, is ill-adapted to the tasks of subjugating a pro­letariat which is launching increasingly bitter and militant struggles. The economic weakness of each national faction of capital has led to its quasi-total dependence on its police and military apparatus to maintain order. Moreover, the domination of Russian imperialism over its bloc -- in contrast to the situation of American imperialism -- has depended almost exclusively on military factors. Thus, in an historical conjuncture when too great a reliance on the direct physical subjugation of the proletariat risks provoking a generalized class war, when capital must first try to control the proletariat ideologically as a prerequisite to its later physical crushing, the bourg­eoisie in the Russian bloc has been incapable of adjusting the forms of its dictatorship to the requirements of the new balance of forces between the classes. Any relaxation of the directly repressive apparatus risks exacerbating the weakness of the state; too great a utilization of the repressive appar­atus risks igniting the proletarian flame. As a result the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc is paralysed before its urgent task of attacking the proletariat.

Inter-imperialist antagonisms

If armaments production and the establishment of a war economy is the only way to prevent the breakdown of the capitalist productive apparatus, it is, nonetheless not an economic policy in itself (whatever important segments of the bourgeoisie may still think), but the preparation for a world conflagration, an expression of the inter-imperialist anta­gonisms which the death crisis of capital­ism is sharpening to the breaking point. The inexorable deepening of the world crisis has not only brought about an extraordinary heightening of tensions between the two imperialist blocs, but has also more clearly revealed the different ways in which Russian and American imperialism dominate the other countries and reservoirs of cheap labour-power. Because of her economic weak­ness, Russia’s domination of other countries depends almost exclusively on direct mili­tary occupation or at least the prospect of speedy and relatively unhindered inter­vention by her armed forces. Moreover, as a result of America’s still overwhelming naval superiority, the regions subject to the military control of Russian imperialism are effectively limited to the Eurasian land mass, to areas readily accessible to Russia’s land armies. This is both the key to Russian domination of Eastern Europe and Mongolia, as well as the inability of Russian imperialism to have more than a very tenuous hold over countries beyond the direct reach of her tanks. In contrast, the supremacy of the productive apparatus of American imperialism is such that it can economically dominate any part of the world. The only barrier to American economic domination is the military hegemony of Russian imperialism over a given area, which as we have seen is for strategic reasons (its naval inferiority) today still limited to areas contiguous to Russia itself.

Russia’s economic inferiority and the limits of her military reach are such that even when the faction of the bourgeoisie, armed and supported by Russia, triumphs in a localized inter-imperialist war and comes to power (Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola), this does not mean that the country unequivocally passes into the Russian bloc. Rather, the combination of the American bloc’s economic weight, which becomes relatively more pro­nounced as the world crisis strikes the weakest economies most furiously, and the strategic limitations of Russian imperialism often produce a period of oscillation be­tween the blocs. Vietnam’s quest for Amer­ican bloc investment, credit, and trade in a vain effort to reconstruct her shattered economy points to the inability of Russia to firmly incorporate even a regime whose very existence depended on Russian military aid into the Russian bloc. Mozambique’s continued economic dependence on South Africa, and Angola’s reliance on the American bloc for the extraction and sale of the oil and minerals which are the basis of her economic life, both indicate the enormous difficulties which Russia is having in trying to dislodge American imperialism from its African strong-points. Be­cause of its economic superiority, even the military defeat of the faction of the local bourgeoisie which it supported, is not in itself sufficient to break the stranglehold of American imperialism over a country; whereas because of its economic weakness nothing short of outright military occupa­tion is sufficient to assure the effective control of a country by Russian imperialism.

It is this economic and strategic superior­ity which is the basis for the continuing shift in the balance between the two imp­erialist camps in favour of the American bloc. The US is now in the midst of elim­inating the most important beachheads that Russian imperialism had established in its efforts to expand beyond the central Eur­asian heartland which is its core. Thus in the Middle East, Egypt and the Sudan are being politically, economically, and even militarily reincorporated into the American bloc, while Syria has already taken the first steps down this same path. Russian imperialism’s recent effort to win a domin­ant place in the Lebanon through the Pales­tinian-Muslim leftist front which it armed and diplomatically backed has been smashed by the very Syrian army -- prompted by Washington -- which Moscow had once so lavishly equipped. The military defeats in Lebanon and the weakening of Russian imperialism throughout the Middle East, have now lead the most powerful factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to re­consider their pro-Russian orientation. Moreover, the US is now beginning to chal­lenge even the hitherto unquestioned Russian hegemony in Iraq. With the re-establishment of America’s almost total domination of the Arab world -- a domination which now embraces the ‘socialist’ as well as the royalist regimes -- nearing completion, the Carter Administration is now directing its attention to the imposition of an Arab-Israeli settle­ment, which would involve the erection of a Palestinian rump state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. American imperialism there­by hopes to establish an enduring Pax Amer­icana over the region and make the Middle East a solid barrier to the expansion of Russian imperialism, rather than the high­way for a Russian drive into Africa and South Asia which decades of internecine warfare had turned it into.

The bitter struggle between the two blocs for control of the Horn of Africa and the vital Bab el-Mandeb Straits which command the sea routes between Europe and Asia, is now entering a decisive stage. The appar­ent triumph of Russia in Ethiopia, where Colonel Mengistu’s regime has opted for Moscow and where Russian arms will permit an escalation of the barbarous war in Eritrea, as well as driving the Eritrean Liberation Front into dependence on American imperialism, may have as its counterpart a reorientation of Somalia towards the Ameri­can bloc. This and the growing influence of America’s client state, Saudi Arabia, over South Yemen is bringing about a change in the imperialist line-up around the Horn of Africa, which may well leave Russian imperialism with only a landlocked Ethiopia, important pieces (Eritrea, Ogaden) of which are being torn from her by avaricious neighbours and liberation fronts backed by the US. An independent American-backed Eritrea, an independent Djibouti occupied by France, and Somali and South Yemeni regimes being drawn into the American orbit by Saudi-Arabia, would (with Egypt and the Sudan now firmly in the American camp) make the Red Sea an American lake.

In India, the defeat of Indira Gandhi by the pro-American Janata coalition and the for­mation of a government headed by Morarji Desai is both forging new economic chains to bind New Delhi to Washington, and is bringing about the complete elimination of the politico-military links to Moscow (established in the course of the Indo-­Pakistani War), upon which Russian imperia­lism sought to challenge American hegemony in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. It is not the expansion of Russian imperialism, but the consolidation of the stranglehold of the American bloc over the Indian sub-continent that is taking place.

Meanwhile in the Far East, the incredible heightening of inter-imperialist antagonisms between Russia and China and the growing military build-up along their extensive frontier is also leading China into the American bloc, a process which the desperate state of her economy is accelerating. While the Carter Administration has perhaps yet to determine the precise nature of America’s commitment to China in the event of a Sino-­Russian war, the flow of arms from the American bloc to Peking and the budding Sino-Indian rapprochement (which most cer­tainly has Washington’s blessing) are unmistakable signs of the weakening of Russian imperialism on the Asian continent.

Washington’s initiatives in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Far East are intended to turn these regions into so many links in a ring of steel which the American bloc is trying to construct so as to confine Russian imper­ialism tightly within its Eurasian core. The success of this policy of American imperialism depends in large part on its capacity to stabilize these regions and attenuate the imperialist rivalries between the different states -- a stabilization of the barbarism into which the permanent crisis of capitalism has already thrust so great a proportion of humanity. The only course open to Russian imperialism if it is to have any possibility of challenging American imperialism for world dominion -- which is the only alternative to its economic extinction -- is to devote all its efforts to destabilizing these regions, fanning the flames of war through its poli­tical and military support to national liberation struggles and those factions of the bourgeoisie within each country for whom the American imposed imperialist status quo in their region is intolerable. Thus in the Middle East, Russia’s only hope of regaining a foothold is through a new Arab-Israeli war. On the Indian sub-continent, the expansion of Russian imperialism can only take place through a new Indo-Pakistani war -- even if this time Russia supports Islamabad, and tries to forge a Muslim bloc consisting of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan with which to challenge an American-backed India. It is just such a policy of destabilization that Russian capi­tal has undertaken in Southern Africa, where arms and money are going to the Patriotic Front in Rhodesia, to SWAPO in South West Africa, and to the emerging urban guerrilla movement in South Africa itself. The US, clearly recognising the danger which such a destabilization represents to its supremacy in this vital part of the world, is attempting to impose black majority rule in Rhodesia and South West Africa, and a system of power-sharing in South Africa, which is in­tended to place its imperialist domination on a firmer basis by providing it with the support of a black faction of the bourgeoi­sie. In all of these regions, however, Russia’s strategic limitations, though not preventing an active policy of destabiliza­tion, make direct military occupation -- the only real basis for Russian hegemony -- ex­tremely difficult.

There is one region, though, where the attempt of Russian imperialism to push outwards from its geo-political core, both gives the promise of yielding the advanced technology and machinery which are the sinews of war, and which is not subject to overwhelming strategic limitations: Europe. The one country in Europe where a Russian moves is likely, and which would not auto­matically precipitate a major war between the two imperialist blocs is Yugoslavia. The death of Tito will exacerbate all of the divisions within the Yugoslav bourgeoi­sie between factions favouring a pro-Russian orientation (the Kominformists) and those favouring a pro-American orientation for the national capital; between the dominant Serbian faction of the bourgeoisie and the growing nationalism of the Croatian and Slovene factions of the bourgeoisie. Russian imperialism may either seek to provoke a change of power in Belgrade or try to dis­member Yugoslavia by providing decisive material support for the establishment of independent Croat and Slovene states tied to Moscow. With its strategic and practical superiority in South East Europe, the spectre of a Russian march to the Adriatic looms large. The effects of such a move -- if it could be successfully accomplished -- would be to significantly alter the rapport de force between the blocs in Southern Europe, and to subject Italy and Greece to growing Russian pressure. To this must be added the growing tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and over mineral rights in the Aegean Sea, which can provide Russian imperialism with the prospect of tearing the American bloc’s flank in the Mediterranean if Washington cannot quickly impose a stable solution. This concentra­tion of Russian pressure in South East Europe and Asia Minor indicates where the next flashpoint of inter-imperialist con­flict may be.

The class struggle of the proletariat

The deepening economic crisis, which threa­tens to paralyze the capitalist productive apparatus, and its manifestations in the sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms, impels the bourgeoisie to establish a war economy, and finally to prepare for a new world butchery. However, the proletariat everywhere bars the way to a war economy and to the world conflagration for which it is the indispensable preparation. The ideological and physical submission of the working class to the capitalist state is a necessary pre-condition for the constitu­tion of a full-fledged war economy. Yet today, the bourgeoisie confronts an undefeated, combative and increasingly class conscious proletariat.

This combativity of the working class was expressed by its militant response to the very first blows of the crisis which sig­naled the definitive end of the period of post-war reconstruction. The wave of fac­tory occupations which culminated in the general strike of 10 million workers in France in 1968; the hot autumn of 1969 in Italy during which industry was paralyzed by mass strikes and factory occupations; the anti-trade union strike by the Kiruna miners that same year, which shattered the more than three decades of “labour peace” which had made Sweden a paradise for capi­tal under its Social Democratic regime; the bitter struggles of the Limburg miners in Belgium in 1970; the violent strikes and pitched battles between tens of thousands of workers and police which spread through Poland’s industrial centres in the winter of 1970-71; the strike wave in Britain, which reached a peak with the general strike in solidarity with the dock-workers in 1972 ; the struggles at SEAT (Barcelona) in 1971 and at Vigo and Ferrol in 1972, which -- with their barricades and street battles with police and their factory assemblies -- marked the resurgence of the proletariat in Spain, were all so many hammer blows which left the bourgeoisie of the capitalist metropoles reeling, and clearly demonstrated that the growing economic crisis coincided with a course towards class war. As a result, if on the one hand, economic necessities made it absolutely imperative for the bourgeoisie to move quickly and decisively to crush the prole­tariat, on the other hand, political reali­ties, the rapport de force between the classes, dictated that the bourgeoisie try to avoid for as long as possible any direct confrontation with the working class.

By comparison with the years 1968-72, the next four years appear to represent a down­swing, a lull, in the class struggle of the proletariat. In fact, as the bourgeoisies of the metropoles having absorbed the first shock-waves of the crisis, desperately sought to displace its most devastating effects onto the weaker capitals, so the most intense confrontations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie shifted to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and China. Egypt has been gripped by waves of wild-cat strikes since 1974: the Helwan textile mills in 1975, the strikes which paralyzed the country’s three great indus­trial centres - Alexandria, Helwan and Cairo in April 1976, and the strikes and street battles which greeted the government’s announcement of price rises in basic foodstuffs in January of this year.

In Israel, violent protests were the workers’ response to huge price rises in 1975, and in November-December 1976, a strike wave affected 35% of the country’s work force in an assault on the Labour Government’s trade union impo­sed social contract. In Africa, in 1976, the proletariat launched massive strikes against the regimes of both ‘black’ and ‘white’ capital: in July the ports of Angola were crippled by strikes, which the MPLA bloodily repressed; in September, the aus­terity measures of Ethiopia’s Marxist-Lenin­ist junta provoked a general strike in the banking, insurance, water, gas and electri­city sectors, leading to violent confronta­tions with the Army: in South Africa both the mining and automobile industry were the scene of bitter strikes, while in Rhodesia the bus drivers in Salisbury paralyzed the city’s transit system for more than forty days, in the face of brutal police repression. In Latin America, the proletariat has responded to the crisis with more and more massive, violent and unified struggles: in Argentina, workers in the electric utilities cut off power in the ma­jor cities in the autumn of 1976, while in Cordoba, the automobile workers clashed with the police; in Peru semi-insurrectional strikes turned Lima into a battlefield both in 1975 and in 1976; in Bolivian tin mines, in Colombia’s plantations and textile mills and in the mill towns and iron-ore mines of Venezuela, the proletariat has engaged in bitter struggles. In China, 1975 and 1976 saw strikes generalize from industry to industry, grip whole provinces and take on semi-insurrectional proportions, as at Hangchow where a general strike lasted three months, involved attacks by workers on gov­ernment and party offices and the erection of barricades in working class districts, and required the use of 10,000 soldiers to bring under control. What took place in 1973-77 was not a slackening in the inten­sity of the proletariat’s resistance to the effects of the crisis but a momentary displacement of the epicentre of the class struggle to the peripheries of the capitalist world.

Moreover, even with respect to the capitalist metropoles, all talk of a gap between the depths of the crisis and the response of the proletariat, of the downswing in class struggle after 1972, must not obscure the fact that no political defeat of the proletariat has taken place, that in none of the centres of world capital has the bourgeoisie physically or ideologically crushed the working class.

Indeed, the apparent lull in the class strug­gle did not represent a diminution in the combativity of the class -- even provisional -- so much as a growing awareness on the part of workers of the ultimate futility of purely economic struggles. It is through their incapacity to defend even their ‘imme­diate’ interests through their often bitter economic struggles that the proletariat has been learning that it must confront capital and its state with directly politicalstrug­gles, that it has been learning the neces­sity for the generalization and politiciza­tion of its struggles.

The wave of strikes that quickly spread from one end of Spain to the other in January-March 1976 and the violent strikes that erupted in Poland in June 1976 marked the beginning of a new phase of generalization and radicalization of proletarian struggles in the capitalist metropoles. The speed with which the struggles at Radom (Poland) and Vitoria (Spain) generalized from industry to industry, taking on an insur­rectional character, is indicative of the lessons of the struggle the class has al­ready learned and of the fury of the gath­ering proletarian storm. During the past year, the bourgeoisies of Italy, Britain, Portugal, Denmark and Holland have faced the first onslaughts of this new wave of workers’ struggle. But no mere enumeration of strikes or of countries affected can any longer provide an accurate picture of the real nature of the present moment, when the proletariat is the key to the turn in the world situation:

“The conditions are being slowly created for the international unity of the class; for the first time in history, the upsurge of workers’ struggles coincides in all countries of the world, both on the periphery (Africa, Asia, Latin America) and in the centre (North America, Europe).” (Accion Proletaria, April-May 1977)

Just as the reappearance of the open crisis in 1976 generated a wave of militant and combative proletarian struggles in the years which followed, so the new stage in the crisis, which is compelling the bour­geoisie to establish a war economy and which is leading the bourgeoisie to genera­lized inter-imperialist war, will itself become a factor in generating a growing recognition on the part of the working class of the necessity of directly political struggles. Thus the bourgeoisie’s imperious necessity to construct a war economy will become a significant factor in accelerating the course towards generalized class war.

The bourgeoisie is led to try to establish its war economy in obedience to the blind laws which determine its actions; while the bourgeois class is incapable of understand­ing the forces which propel it towards war, revolutionary marxists can clearly see what course the bourgeoisie will be compelled to take, and can understand the basic tendencies of capitalist economy and politics which the bourgeoisie can only dimly perceive. It is for this reason that the ICC can trace the basic political and economic perspectives which will face the capitalist system in the coming years. However, the class struggle of the proletariat as it becomes a directly political struggle is not produced by blind laws, but is a conscious struggle. Thus, if revolutionaries cannot predict when such struggles will erupt -- just because of this factor of consciousness which is their key -- they can, and must, by their political intervention in the class struggle, by carrying out their vital role of contri­buting to the generalization of revolution­ary consciousness throughout the class, bec­ome an active and decisive factor in the actual outbreak and development of the political struggles which will lead towards the generalized class war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie which is now on the historical agenda.

Summer, I977

1 In Italy, were the Socialist Party is too weak, the necessary move to the left by the bourgeoisie must immediately proceed through the incorporation of the Stalinists into the government – directly or indirectly.

Recent and ongoing:

Resolution on proletarian political groups

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The characterization of the various organi­zations who claim to defend socialism and the working class is extremely important for the ICC. This is by no means a purely theo­retical or abstract question; on the con­trary, it is directly relevant to the atti­tude the Current has towards these organi­zations, and thus to its intervention to­wards them: on whether it denounces them as organs and products of capital; or whether it polemicizes and discusses with them in order to help them evolve towards greater clarity and programmatic rigour; or to assist in the appearance of tendencies within them who are looking for such clarity. This is why it is necessary to avoid any hasty or subjective appreciation of the organizations the ICC comes up against and to define the criteria with which we approach these groups as precisely as we can, with­out resorting to rigid and formalistic schema. Any errors or precipitation here will mitigate against the fulfillment of the basic task of constituting a pole of regroupment for revolutionaries, and could lead to deviations either of an opportunist or a sectarian nature which would threaten the very life of the Current.

I. The revolutionary movement of the work­ing class expresses itself in a process of maturation of consciousness, a difficult and jagged process which is never linear and which goes through various fumblings and hesitations. It necessarily manifests itself in the simultaneous appearance and existence of a number of more or less deve­loped organizations. This process is based on both the immediate and historical exper­ience of the class, and has need of both if it is to be developed and enriched. It must appropriate the past gains of the class but at the same time it must be able to criticize and go beyond the limitations of these gains, an activity which is only possible if there has been a real assimilation of these gains. Thus the different currents which appear in the class can be distinguished by their greater or lesser capacity to assume these tasks. While the development of class consciousness involves a break from the ruling bourgeois ideology, the groups who express and participate in this development are themselves subject to the pressure of this ideology, which constantly threatens them either with disappearing or being absorbed by the class enemy.

These general characteristics of the process whereby revolutionary consciousness develops are even more marked in the decadent period of capitalism. While decadence has laid the basis for the destruction of the syst­em both from the objective point of view (the mortal crisis of the mode of production) and the subjective point of view (the decomposition of bourgeois ideology and the weakening of its hold on the working class), it has also set new obstacles and difficulties in the way of the development of consciousness by the proletariat. We are referring to:

-- the atomization experienced by the class outside periods of intense struggle;

-- the increasing totalitarian hold exerted by the state over the whole of social life;

-- the integration into the state of all the mass organizations -- parties and unions -- which in the nineteenth century were a terrain for the development of class consciousness;

-- finally, the added confusion coming from radical tendencies produced by the decomposition of official bourgeois ideology.

Today, in addition to these factors, we have to take into account:

-- the weight of the most profound counter­revolution the workers’ movement has ever gone through, which has led to the disappearance or sclerosis of past commu­nist currents;

-- the fact that the chronic crisis of the system has given rise to the historical reappearance of the proletariat has also led to the violent accentuation of the decomposition of various middle strata, particularly the student and intellec­tual milieu, whose radicalization has thrown all kinds of smokescreens over the effort of the revolutionary class to become conscious.

II. In this general framework for examining the movement of the class towards an aware­ness of its historic goals, we can observe three basic kinds of organizations.

First of all, the parties which were once or­gans of the class but have succumbed to the pressure of capitalism and have become def­enders of the system by taking on a more or less direct role in the management of nat­ional capital. With these parties, history teaches us:

-- that any return to the proletarian camp is impossible;

-- that as soon as they go over to the other camp, their whole dynamic is deter­mined by the needs of capital and they become expressions of the life of capi­talism;

-- that while their language and programme still contain references to the working class, to socialism, or to revolutionary positions, and though the positions of such parties are not always coherent in themselves, they are based on the general coherence demanded by the defence of capitalist interests.

Among these parties, we can mainly cite the Socialist Parties which came out of the IInd International, the Communist Parties which came out of the IIIrd International, the organizations of official anarchism and the Trotskyist tendencies. All these parties have taken their place in the defence of the national, capital as agents of law and order or as touts for the imperialist war.

Secondly, organizations whose working class nature is indisputable because of their ability to draw the lessons from the past experience of the class, to understand new historical developments, to reject all con­ceptions which have shown themselves to be alien to the working class, and whose posi­tions as a whole have obtained a high level of coherence. Even though the process whereby consciousness develops is never completed, even though there can never be a perfect coherence, and even though class positions need to be constantly enriched, we have seen throughout history the exis­tence of currents who, at a given moment, have represented the most advanced and complete, though not exclusive, expressions of class consciousness, and who have played a central role in the acceleration of consciousness.

In our relationships with groups of this type, who are close to the ICC but outside it, our aim is clear. We attempt to engage in fraternal debate with them and take up the different questions confronting the working class in order:

-- to achieve the greatest possible clarity within the movement as a whole;

-- to explore the possibilities of streng­thening our political agreement and mov­ing towards regroupment.

Thirdly, groupings whose class nature, unl­ike the first two, has not been settled in a clear way and who, as expressions of the complex and difficult process of class cons­ciousness, can be distinguished from the second kind of organization by the fact that:

-- they have not detached themselves so clearly from capitalist ideology and are more vulnerable to it;

-- they are less capable of assimilating either the past gains or the new develop­ments of the class struggle;

-- to the detriment of a solid coherence, there co-exists in their programme both proletarian and bourgeois positions;

-- that they are susceptible to contradic­tory tendencies towards, on the one hand, absorption or destruction by capital, and on the other hand towards a positive development.

With these groups, because they are sunk in confusion, the demarcation line between the proletarian camp and the bourgeois camp is extremely difficult to establish in a formal way, even though it does exist. For the same reasons it is difficult to classify these groups in a precise way. However, we can distinguish three broad categories:

1. More or less formal currents which come out of embryonic and still-confused move­ments of the class.

2. Currents who come from a break with org­anizations which have gone over to the enemy camp.

Both these groups are expressions of the general process of breaking with bourgeois ideology.

3. Communist currents which are degenerating, generally as a result of sclerosis and exhaustion, and who have an inability to relate their original positions to the contemporary situation.

III. Groups of the first type include such informal currents as the 1968 ‘March 22nd Movement’, ‘autonomous groups’, etc, all of them organizations which came out of the immediate struggle itself and thus without any historical roots or developed platform, but established on the basis of a few vague or partial positions lacking any global coherence and ignorant of the totality of the historic acquisitions of the class. These characteristics make these currents very vulnerable; this is most often expres­sed by their disappearance after a short time, or their rapid transformation into leftist camp followers.

However, it is also possible for these currents to engage in a process of clarifi­cation and of deepening their positions, an evolution which leads towards their dis­appearance as independent groups and the integration of their members into the poli­tical organization of the class.

In its relations with each of these currents, the ICC must intervene in order to encourage and stimulate a positive evolution of this nature, and to try to prevent their disap­pearance in confusion or their recuperation by capitalism.

IV. With regard to the second kind of group, we are only talking about currents who separate themselves from their parent organization on the basis of a break with certain points of the programme, and not in order to ‘safeguard’ so-called revolution­ary principles which are supposedly being betrayed. Thus there is nothing hopeful in the various Trotskyist splits which time and again propose to safeguard or return to a ‘pure’ Trotskyism.

Groups which have appeared on the basis of a break with the parent organization are fundamentally different from communist fractions who appear as a reaction to the degeneration of a proletarian organization. The latter base themselves not on a break but on a continuity with a revolutionary programme which is being threatened by the opportunist policies of the organization -- even if such fractions subsequently rectify and deepen that programme in the light of experience. Thus while communist fractions appear with a coherent, elaborated revolu­tionary programme, currents who are break­ing with the counter-revolution tend to base themselves on essentially negative pos­itions, on a partial opposition to the positions of the parent organization, and this does not add up to a solid communist programme. Breaking with a counter­revolutionary coherence is not enough to give them a revolutionary coherence. More­over, the inevitably partial aspect of their break is expressed by a tendency to hold onto a certain number of the practices of the parent group (activism, careerism, manoeuvrism, etc) or to take up symmetrical but no less erroneous practices (academicism, rejection of organization, sectarianism, etc).

For all these reasons, it is very difficult for these groups to evolve positively as groups. Their initial deformations are usually too strong for them to fully emerge from the counter-revolution, if they do not quite simply disappear. Dissolution is in the last analysis the most positive outcome because it enables the militants of the group to free themselves from their organic roots and thus to move towards a revolutionary coherence.

However, something which is a strong proba­bility is not an absolute certainty, and the ICC must guard against any tendency to totally reject such groups as hopelessly counter-revolutionary. This can only stand in the way of the positive evolution of such groups or of their militants. There can be a great difference in the develop­ment of such groups according to the nature of their parent organization. Groups who split from organizations which have a cohe­rent, well-founded counter-revolutionary programme and practice (like the Trotsky­ists for example) in general suffer the greatest handicap. On the other hand, groups who come out of organizations which are more informal and have a less elaborate programme (such as the anarchists), or who have betrayed the class more recently, have a better chance of moving towards revolut­ionary positions, even as groups.

Furthermore, as the crisis deepens, the gap between the radical phraseology of the leftists and their bourgeois policies be­comes more and more obvious, and this will tend to provoke a reaction by their health­iest elements, who were originally taken in by this phraseology; this will give rise to further splits of this kind.

In all these cases, while having an even more cautious attitude to these groups than to groups of the first type, and while guarding against any idea of having ‘joint committees’ with them, as the PIC advocated for example, the ICC must intervene actively in the evolution of such currents, criticize them in an open, non-sectarian manner in order to stimulate discussion and clarifi­cation within them and avoid repetition of past errors like the one which led Revolut­ion Internationale to write “we have doubts about the positive evolution of a group which comes from anarchism” in a letter addressed to Journal des Luttes de Classe, whose members later on founded the Belgian section of the ICC along with RRS and VRS.

V. The problem posed by communist groups who are degenerating is probably one of the most difficult to resolve and needs to be examined with great care. The fact that once you have gone from the proletarian camp to the bourgeois camp there can be no going back and that this passage takes place in one direction only, means that we have to be extremely prudent in determining the moment this passage takes place and in the choice of the criteria upon which we base this judgment.

For example, we cannot say that an organi­zation is bourgeois because it is acting not as a factor of clarification of class cons­ciousness but as a factor of confusion: any error committed by a proletarian organiza­tion and by the proletariat in general obviously benefits the class enemy, but even when an organization commits extremely serious errors we cannot say that it is therefore an emanation of the class enemy. The existence of bad soldiers in an army is undoubtedly a weakness which benefits the enemy camp. But does this make such soldiers traitors?

In the second place, we cannot say that an organization is dead as a proletarian organ as soon as it crosses one class frontier. Among the class frontiers, some have a particularly important influence on the overall coherence of the programme. To cross one of these therefore constitutes a decisive criteria: thus support for ‘national defence’ immediately places an organization in the camp of the bourgeoisie. However, if one erroneous position, even on a single point, can throw a certain light on the whole of a group’s programme, some positions, even if they signify a lack of communist coherence within a group, do not automatically prevent the group from also holding authentically revolutionary posi­tions. Thus some communist currents were able to make fundamental contributions to the clarification of the revolutionary pro­gramme, while continuing to hold some com­pletely false positions on some important points (for example, the Italian Left, which continued to hold very erroneous positions on the questions of substitutionism, the unions, and even the nature of the USSR).

Finally, one of the most important points to consider is the evolution of the group we are dealing with. Any judgment must be based on a dynamic and not a static analysis. Thus even though their positions may be the same there is a difference bet­ween a group that arises today which gives its support to national liberation struggles, and a group that was formed on the basis of the struggle against imperialist war but which does not understand the link between the two questions, and thus capitulates on the question of national liberation.

Although any new-born group which defends a counter-revolutionary position runs the risk of passing rapidly and as a bloc to the bourgeois camp, communist currents which have been forged in the historical struggles of the class, even though they might exhibit important signs of degenera­tion, do not evolve so rapidly. The extre­mely difficult conditions in which they were born have obliged them to don an organiza­tional and programmatic armour which is much more resistant to the blows of the ruling class. Moreover, it is generally the case that their sclerosis is in part the ransom they pay for their attachment and loyalty to revolutionary principles, for their distrust; of any kind of ‘innovation’, which has been for so many other groups the Trojan horse of degeneration; it is this distrust which has led them to reject any idea of opening their programme to new developments coming out of historical experience.

It is for all these reasons that, in general, only major events in the evolution of society, imperialist war or revolution, which are a decisive moment in the life of a political organization, enable us to finally determine whether an organization, as a body, has gone over to the enemy camp. Often, only such situations can resolve the question of whether the inability to understand certain aberrations is the re­sult of the blindness of proletarian ele­ments or of the coherence of the counter­revolution. It is generally at moments when there is no longer any room for ambiguities that a degenerating organization either proves its definitive passage into the enemy camp by openly collaborating with the bour­geoisie, or it remains within the proletar­ian camp by reacting in a healthy manner, thus showing that it is still a fertile soil for the development of communist thought.

But what is valid for the large organiza­tions of the class when they degenerate applies much less to small communist groups with a limited impact. While the first are received with flags flying by the bourgeoi­sie, for whom they will be playing a very important role, small communist groups in decay, unable to take on a real function for capital, are ruthlessly pulverized and die in the long and painful agony of sects.

VI. At the present time there are broadly speaking two currents which fall into the above category, which appear to be caught up in a process of sclerosis and decay: groups issuing from the Dutch and German Left on the one hand, and from the Italian Left on the other. Among these groups some have been able to resist the tendency to­wards degeneration better than others, not­ably Spartacusbond in the first case, and Battaglia Comunista in the second, to the extent that they have been able to break with many of the sclerotic positions. On the other hand, some groups are at a far more advanced stage of degeneration, for example Programme Communiste. With regard to this organization, whatever level of re­gression it has reached, there are not yet any decisive elements which allow us to say that it has already gone over as a body into the camp of the bourgeoisie. We must guard against any hasty judgment on this ques­tion, because this could stand in the way of helping in the evolution of elements or tendencies who may arise within the organi­zation in order to fight against its dege­neration, or to break from it.

With regard to all these groups it is a question of maintaining an open attitude, intransigently defending our positions and denouncing their mistakes, while demonstra­ting our willingness to discuss with them.

VII. In defending the ICC’s general atti­tude towards groups and elements who defend more or less confused positions, we have to bear in mind the fact that we are living in a period of an historical resurgence of the class struggle.

In periods of reflux and defeat, like the one we left behind us in the late sixties, the main concern of communist groups is to safeguard basic principles, which may mean isolating themselves from the contemporary milieu, so as to avoid being dragged into its logic. In such circumstances there is little hope for the appearance of new revo­lutionary elements: the difficult task of defending communist principles which are being endangered by the counter-revolution tends to be taken up by elements who have come out of the old parties and who have remained loyal to these principles.

In today’s period of resurgence, however, while giving the greatest attention to the evolution of communist currents originating in the last revolutionary wave, and to dis­cussions with them, our principle preoccupa­tion must be to avoid cutting ourselves off from the elements and groups which are the inevitable product of this resurgence of the class. We can really only fulfill our role as a pole of regroupment for them if we are able:

a. to avoid considering ourselves as the one and only revolutionary group that exists today;

b. to firmly defend our positions in front of them;

c. to maintain an open attitude to discus­sion with them, a discussion that must take place in public and not through private correspondence.

Far from being in contradiction with each other, firmness in our principles and open­ness in our attitude mutually complement each other. We are not afraid of discus­sion precisely because we are convinced of the validity of our positions.

Life of the ICC:

State and dictatorship of the proletariat

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Introduction

Before the experience of the revolution in Russia, marxists had a relatively simple conception of the relationship between the proletariat and the state in the period of transition from capitalism to communism.

It was known that this period of transition would begin with the destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie and that this phase could only precede and be a prep­aration for a communist society in which there would be neither classes, nor political power, nor a state. It was known that dur­ing this period the working class would have to establish its dictatorship over the rest of society. It was also known that, since this phase still bore with it all the birthmarks of capitalism, especially material scarcity and the division of society into classes, there would inevitably be some kind of state apparatus; finally, largely thanks to the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, it was known that this apparatus could not be the bourgeois state ‘conquered’ by the workers, that in its form and content it would be a transitional institution essentially different from all previous states. But as for the problem of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state, between the working class and this institution inherited from the past, it was felt that the question could be answered quite simply: the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition are one and the same thing, the armed working class is identical to the state. In a way, the proletariat in the period of transition could take up Louis XIV’s famous dictum “L’Etat, c’est moi!”.

Thus, in the Communist Manifesto, this state is described as “the proletariat organized as the ruling class”; similarly, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx wrote:

“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a politi­cal transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Later, on the eve of October 1917, Lenin, locked in a struggle against social democ­racy, which had hurled itself into the mire of World War I by participating in the government of the belligerent bourgeois states, vigorously reaffirmed this concep­tion in State and Revolution:

“ ... (the marxists) recognize that after the proletariat has conquered political power it must utterly destroy the old state machine and substitute for it a new one consisting of an organization of the armed workers ...”

or again

“Revolution consists in the proletariat destroying the ‘administrative apparatus’ and the whole state machine, replacing it with a new one, consisting of the armed workers.”

From this it followed naturally that the state in the period of transition could only be the most complete and effective expression of the working class and its power. The relationship between the state and the proletariat appeared to be so simple because they were one and the same thing. The state bureaucracy? It would not exist, or it would not pose any major problems be­cause the workers themselves (even a cook, as Lenin said) would take over its functions. Could one seriously envisage the possibility of antagonisms or conflict between the wor­king class and the state on the economic level? Impossible: How could the prole­tariat go on strike against the state, since it was the state? How could the state impose anything contrary to the economic interests of the working class, since the state was the direct emanation of the class? It seemed even less possible to envisage any antagonism on the political level. Was the state not the highest expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat? How could it express any counter-revolutionary ten­dencies when it was by definition the spear­head of the proletariat’s battle against the counter-revolution?

The Russian Revolution shattered this sim­plistic viewpoint -- a viewpoint which was inevitably predominant in the workers’ movement of that time, since apart from the two months of the Paris Commune, the move­ment had never really confronted the prob­lems of the transition period in all their complexity.

Thus, after the seizure of power in October 1917, the state was called the ‘proletarian state’; the best workers, the most experien­ced fighters, were put in charge of the main organs of the state; strikes were forbidden; all decisions of the state organs had to be accepted as expressions of the overall needs of the revolutionary struggle. In short, the oft-proclaimed identity between the working class and the state was inscri­bed in the laws and the flesh of the new revolution.

But, right from the beginning, the neces­sities of social existence began to syste­matically contradict the premises of this identification. In face of the difficult­ies posed to a revolution that was being progressively smothered by its isolation from the international movement of the class, the state apparatus showed that it was neither a body identical to the ‘armed workers’, nor the highest incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat; it was a body of functionaries clearly distinct from the proletariat, and its innate tend­encies did not lead to the communist trans formation, but to conservatism. The bureau­cratization of the functionaries charged with the organization of production, dis­tribution, the maintenance of order, etc, took place in the very first months of the revolution; and no-one -- not even the lea­ders of the Bolshevik Party at the head of the state, who certainly tried to fight against it -- could do anything about it. Above all, since the state was ‘proletarian’, the state bureaucracy was not recognized as a counter-revolutionary force.

On both the economic and political levels, the gulf between the working class and what was supposed to be ‘its’ state grew wider and wider. As early as the end of 1917, economic strikes broke out in Petrograd; as early as 1918, the left communist tenden­cies denounced the state bureaucracy and its opposition to the interests of the working class; in 1920-1, at the end of the civil war, these antagonisms exploded openly in the Petrograd strikes and the Kronstadt insurrection, which was crushed by the Red Army. In short, in its struggle to main­tain power, the proletariat in Russia did not find that the state was the instrument it thought it would be. On the contrary, it was something that resisted its efforts and quickly transformed itself into the main protagonist of the counter-revolution.

Of course, the defeat of the Russian Revolu­tion was, in the last instance, the product of the defeat of the world revolution and not of the activities of the state. But the experience of the struggle against the counterrevolution in Russia showed that the state apparatus and its bureaucracy was neither the proletariat, nor the spearhead of its dictatorship, and still less an institution to which the armed proletariat had to subordinate itself on account of its so-called ‘proletarian’ character.

It is true that the experience of the prole­tariat in Russia was condemned to failure the minute it failed to extend internation­ally. It is true that the strength of this antagonism between the proletariat and the state was an expression of the weakness of the world proletariat and of the non­existence of the material conditions which would have allowed the proletarian dictatorship to flourish. But it would be illusory to think that the extent of these difficul­ties can entirely explain this antagonism, and that in more favourable conditions the identification between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition will still be valid. The period of transition is a phase in which the proletariat will confront a fundamental pro­blem: it will have to establish new social relations when, by definition, the material conditions for these relations to grow can only be instigated by the revolutionary activity of the armed workers. This prob­lem was particularly extreme in Russia, but in essence it was the same problem the wor­kers will confront tomorrow. The grave obstacles encountered by the proletarian dictatorship in Russia do not make this ex­perience the exception which confirms the rule about the identity between the prole­tariat and the transitional state. On the contrary, the Russian experience has shed a particularly sharp light on the inevita­bility and nature of the antagonism between the revolutionary power of the proletariat and the institution which has to maintain order during the transition period.

Since its foundations, the ICC, following the work of the Italian Left (Bilan) between the wars and the group Internationalisme in the forties, has taken on the complicated but indispensable task of developing, re­examining, and completing a revolutionary understanding of the relationship between the proletariat and the transitional state, in the light of the Russian experience (see nos. 1,3, & 6 of the International Review).

As part of this effort we are publishing here a letter from a comrade who reacted critically to the theses elaborated on this question in the resolution adopted at its Second Congress by Revolution Internationale, section of the ICC in France (see International Review no.8); the reply to this critique then follows.

Comrades E’s letter

To the extent that marxism is the scientific comprehension of the successive modes of social reproduction in the past, it is also a prediction of the fundamental stages to­wards the final social formation -- communism -- from the society we are living in now. Economic forms have transformed themselves in an uninterrupted process in the history of human society. But this process has taken the form of convulsions, of struggles in which the armed political confrontation of classes has broken the fetters holding back the development of new formations. This is the period of the struggle for power, which culminates in a dictatorship of the forces of tomorrow over the forces of yester­day (or vice versa until a new crisis breaks out). Socialist revisionism prior to World War I claimed that it had got rid of Marx and Engels’ theory of dictatorship, and it was Lenin who had the merit of setting this theory back on its feet: in State and Revolution he completely restored the marx­ist position by showing the need to destroy the bourgeois state. In perfect accord with marxist theory, Lenin thus set out a frame­work which made it possible to distinguish the successive phases in the transition from capitalism to communism.

Intermediary stage

Once the proletariat has conquered political power, it will, like all previous classes impose its own dictatorship. Being unable to abolish other classes at a single blow, the proletariat will set them outside the law. This means that the proletarian state will control an economy which in one sector is not only based on mercantile distribution, but also on private ownership of the means of production, whether through individuals or associations; at the same time, through its despotic interventions, the proletarian state will open the way to the lower state of communism. As we can see, contrary to RV’s assertions about the supposed complex­ities of Lenin’s conception of the state and its role, the essence of his position is very simple: the proletariat makes itself the ruling class and creates its own state organ, which differs in form from previous states, but which has essentially the same function: the oppression of other classes, violence concentrated against them for the triumph of the interests of the ruling class, even if these interests are those of humanity in the long term.

The lower stage of communism

In this phase, society will already be car­rying out the distribution of products to its members in a planned way; there is no need for money or exchange. Distribution is organized centrally without any exchange of equivalent values. At this stage there would not only be an obligation to work, but labour time would be accounted for and certificates attesting how much labour has been performed would be given out -- the famous ‘labour-time vouchers’. These would have the characteristic that they could not be accumulated -- any attempt at accumulation would be a pure loss, since an aliquot part of labour would receive no equivalent. The law of value would have been destroyed be­cause society “does not accord any value to its products” (Engels). After this second stage comes the higher stage of communism which we won’t go into here.

As we have seen, marxism sees the necessary pre-condition of the transition period to be an initial violent political revolution, whose inevitable outcome is the class dic­tatorship. By exerting this dictatorship through its despotic intervention and a monopoly of armed force, the proletariat will carry out the profound ‘reforms’ which will destroy the last vestiges of capitalism.

So far it seems that there are no disagree­ments. The difficulty comes in when you affirm that “the state has a historic nature which is anti-communist and anti-proleta­rian”, that it is essentially conservative, and that therefore the proletarian dictator­ship “cannot find its authentic and total expression in a conservative instrument par excellence, the state.” Here, if you will pardon the brutality of my words, we see anarchism coming through the window after being chased out the door. You accept the dictatorship of the proletariat but you for­get that ‘state’ and the exclusive dictator­ship of a class are synonymous.

Before criticizing more specifically some of the affirmations contained in the text, I want to return to the fundamental lines of the marxist theory of the state. For Engels every state is defined by a precise territ­ory and by the nature of the ruling class. It is thus defined by a place, the capital where the government meets; this government being for marxism “the executive committee for the interests of the ruling class”. In the transition from feudal power to bourg­eois power, we see the development of a poli­tical theory -- typical of bourgeois mystifi­cations -- which in all historic bourgeois revolutions has accompanied the passage from feudalism to capitalism. The bourgeoisie with its mystified consciousness claimed that it was destroying the power of one class not to set up the rule of another class, but to build a state based on the harmonious accord of ‘the whole people’. But in all revolutions a series of facts have highligh­ted the correctness of the marxist view of classes, that since the dictatorship of one class has always been accompanied by the violation of the liberty of other classes, violence directed against other classes, even terror, has always been an inseparable aspect of bourgeois revolutions.

In the proletarian revolution, one of the first acts to carry out is the destruction of the old state apparatus; once the class is in power it must do this without hesi­tation. This was the lesson Marx drew from the Paris Commune which on being installed at the Hotel de Ville opposed the state with its own state power and before being itself crushed, crushed even individual members of the enemy class by terror. And if there was any fault, it wasn’t that of being too ferocious, but of not being ferocious enough. (Marx)

From this important experience of the prole­tariat, Marx drew a fundamental lesson which we can’t ignore; that exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation and that the proletariat needs it to do away with exploitation once and for all. The destruction of the bourgeoisie can only take place when the proletariat becomes the rul­ing class. This means that the emancipation of the working class is impossible within the limits of the bourgeois state. This has to be defeated in the civil war and its whole machinery dismantled. After the revo­lutionary victory, another historic form will arise until socialist society emerges and the state withers away.

After this brief affirmation of what are to me pillars of marxist theory on the state and on the passage from one society to another, and more specifically from capita­lism to communism, I will now deal with the present Resolution on the period of transi­tion. What is striking about this text is the contradictory character of some of the things it affirms.

On the one hand it affirms that “the politi­cal seizure of power over society by the proletariat precedes, conditions and guaran­tees the process of economic and social transformation”, but it doesn’t say that taking political power means setting up a dictatorship over other classes and that the state is and always was the organ of dictatorship by one class over another (even though it may be different in its character­istics -- functions, division of powers, system of representatives and so on -- accor­ding to the mode of production and the classes whose rule it stands for).

Moreover, when it is affirmed that “this whole state organization categorically excludes any participation in it by exploi­ting classes and strata, who are deprived of all political and civil rights”, it doesn’t point out that all the characteris­tics of this state, correctly expressed in other parts of the same paragraph and above all the part just mentioned (about the political representation of one class only), are not just formal differences but destroy all the basic characteristics of the bourg­eois state and prove the much-maligned identity between the state and the dictator­ship of the proletariat.

But on what basis can one affirm the absol­ute necessity for the proletariat not to identify its own dictatorship with the state in the period of transition? Mainly because it is asserted that the state is a conservative institution par excellence.

Here we are joining up with the anti-histori­cal viewpoint of anarchism with its opposi­tion to the state on principle. The anarchists base their convictions on the need to be free of the yoke of ‘authority’. RI doesn’t go that far, obviously, but just like the anarchists it judges the state to be conservative and reactionary no matter what social epoch or geographical region, no matter what direction it is oriented towards and thus no matter what kind of class rule it is the expression of, or the historical period in which that class rule is situated.

Marxism doesn’t see things in this way. For marxism the state is a different institution in different epochs, both in relation to its formal characteristics and its functions.

If we study history, marxist materialism teaches us that, in revolutionary epochs, as soon as a class has conquered power it stabilizes the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of its class interests. The state then takes on the function of the revolutionary class that has set it up. In other words, having crushed the resistance of other classes by terror, its despotic interventions allow the productive forces to develop -- by casting down obstacles in the way, by stabilizing and imposing through a monopoly of armed force a whole framework of laws and relations of production which allow the productive forces to grow and correspond to the inter­ests of the new class in power. To give but one example, the French state in 1793 took on an eminently revolutionary role.

Another reason is expressed in the same paragraph of point C: “the state in the transition period bears all the marks of a class-divided society”. This is a very strange reason, because everything that comes out of capitalist society will bear its marks. Not only the state, but also the proletariat organized in the soviets, because it will have grown up and been edu­cated under the influence of the conservative ideology of the capitalist system. Only the party, while not constituting an island of communism within capitalism, is less marked by these stigmata because it is based on “a will and a consciousness which become the premises for action as a result of a general historical elaboration” (Bordiga). (These affirmations may seem a bit summary, but I will clarify them later on.)

To conclude, I will deal with the profound contradiction your conception leads to. You say “the proletariat’s domination over soci­ety is also its domination over the state and this can only be ensured through its own class dictatorship”. I will reply with the classic words of Lenin, who, in State and Revolution once again underlined the essence of the marxist theory of the state:

“The essence of Marx’s teaching on the state has been mastered only by those who understand that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capita­lism from ‘classless society’, from communism. The forms of bourgeois states are extremely varied, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis is inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevi­tably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Thus from the marxist point of view, the state can be defined as an organ (different in form and structure according to the his­torical epoch, the class society, and the orientation it expresses) through which the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on a monopoly of armed force, will be exerted.

It is thus nonsense to talk about a state subjected to a dictatorship which is exter­nal to it, and which cannot therefore inter­vene despotically in economic and social reality in order to impose a definite class orientation on it.

E.

The ICC’s reply

Two ideas underlie comrade E’s critique: the first is the rejection of the affirma­tion that the “state is a conservative institution par excellence”; the second is the reaffirmation of the identity between the state and the dictatorship of the prole­tariat in the period of transition, since the state is always the state of the ruling class. Let us examine these two arguments more closely. E writes:

“(RI asserts that) the state is a cons­ervative institution par excellence. Here we are joining up with the anti-historical viewpoint of anarchism with its opposition to the state on principle. The anarchists base their convictions on the need to be free of the yoke of ‘auth­ority’. RI doesn’t go that far, obvious­ly, but just like the anarchists it judges the state to be conservative and reactionary no matter what social epoch or geographical region, no matter what direction it is oriented towards and thus no matter what kind of class rule it is the expression of, or the historical period in which that class rule is situated.”

Before considering why the state is indeed a “conservative organ par excellence,” let us reply to this polemical argument which integrates our position with that of the anarchists.

Our conception is said to “join up with the anti-historical viewpoint of anarchism” be­cause it draws out a characteristic of state institutions (their conservative nature) independently of the “geographical region”, the “class rule it is the expression of” and “the historical period in which that class rule is situated”.

But why is it ‘anti-historical’ to draw out the general characteristics of an institut­ion or a phenomenon throughout history, whatever specific forms it may take on in a given period? How can we use history to understand reality if we don’t know how to draw out the general laws which operate in different periods and specific conditions? Is marxism ‘anti-historical’ when it says that since society has been divided into classes “the class struggle is the motor force in history” whatever the historical period and whatever classes are involved?

We can see the need to distinguish what is particular and specific to each state in history (feudal state, bourgeois state, transitional state, etc). But how can we understand these particularities if we don’t know what generalities they are to be defined against? The ability to draw out the general characteristics of a phenomenon throughout history, throughout all the particular forms it may take on, is not only the basis of any historical analysis but is also a pre-condi­tion for understanding the specificities of any general problem.

From the marxist point of view one might challenge our view that it is a general law that the state has a conservative character, but one can’t challenge the very idea of trying to define the general historical character of a phenomenon. To do this would be to deny the possibility of any historical analysis.

It is also asserted that our position is close to that of anarchism because it is based on “opposition to the state in prin­ciple”. Let us recall what is meant by the anarchists’ opposition in principle to the state. Rejecting the analysis of history in terms of class and of economic determi­nism, the anarchists never understood that the state was a product of the needs of a class-divided society; they saw it as an ‘evil’ in itself, which, along with religion and authoritarianism, was at the root of all the evils of society (“I am against the state because the state is accursed” as Louis Michel put it). For the same reason they considered that there was no need for a period of transition between capitalism and communism, and still less for a state. The state could and had to be ‘abolished’, ‘forbidden’ by decree the day after the general insurrection.

What has this in common with the idea that the state, a product of the division of society into classes, has a conservative essence because it has the function of holding back class conflicts and maintaining them within the limits of order and social stability? If we stress the conservative character of this institution it’s not be­cause we advocate that the proletariat should have an ‘apolitical’, indifferent attitude to the state, or because we want to spread illusions about the possibility of making the state disappear by decree while class divisions continue to exist; it is in order to show why the proletariat, far from submitting unconditionally to the authority of the state in the period of transition -- as is suggested by the idea that the state is the incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat -- must sub­ject this apparatus to a permanent relation of force, to its own class dictatorship. What is there is common between this vision and that of the anarchists who reject en bloc the state, the period of transition, and above all the dictatorship of the prole­tariat? To assimilate this vision to that of the anarchists is simply to play with words in the interest of polemic.

But let us go to the heart of the problem. Why is the state a conservative institution par excellence?

The word conservative means that which opposes any innovation, that which resists any overturning of the existing order. Now the state, no matter what kind, is an institution whose essential function is precisely that of maintaining order, main­taining the existing order. It is the pro­duct of the need of every class society to provide itself with an organ which can maintain by force an order which can’t be maintained harmoniously and spontaneously because it is divided into social groupings with antagonistic economic interests. It thus constitutes the force which every act­ion aimed at overturning the existing order -- and thus every revolutionary action -- must come up against.

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without ... it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic inter­ests, might not consume themselves and society in sterile struggle, a power seemingly standing above society became necessary for the purpose of moderating the conflict, of keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.” (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State)

In this famous formulation of Engels, which explains the needs and functions fulfilled by the state, we find a clear statement of the essential aspect of this institution: “moderating the conflict” between classes, “keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’ and a few pages further on, “the state arose from the need to hold class antagon­isms within cheek”.

Since we know that the force which leads to revolutionary transformation is none other than the class struggle that it is this ‘conflict’, this ‘antagonism’ which it is the state’s task to ‘moderate’ and ‘hold in check’, then it is easy to understand why the state is an essentially conservative insti­tution.

In societies of exploitation, where the state is overtly the guardian of the inter­ests of the economically dominant class, the conservative role of the state in the face of any movement which challenges the existing economic order (of which the state is always, along with the ruling class, the beneficiary) appears quite clearly. However, this conservative character of the state is no less present in the state in the period of transition to communism.

At each stage of the communist revolution (destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie in one or several countries, then throughout the world; collectivization of new sectors of production; development of the collectivization of distribution in the industrial centres, then in the advanced agricultural sectors, then in the backward ones, etc), and as long as the development of the productive forces has not reached a level which would allow each human being to participate in collectivized production on a world scale and receive goods from society “according to his needs”, as long as human­ity has not attained this stage of wealth which would finally allow it to do away with all forms of rationing and to unite in a human community -- at each stage society will have to resort to uniform social rules and laws, which will enable it to live in accord with the existing conditions of pro­duction without being torn apart by the con­flict between classes and while waiting to go on to a new stage.

Because we are dealing with laws which still express a stage of scarcity, that is a stage where the well-being of one still tends to be at the expense of another, these are laws which, while imposing ‘equality in scar­city’ will require an apparatus of constraint and administration which will make the whole of society respect them. This apparatus can only be the state.

If, for example, during this period of tran­sition we decide to freely distribute cons­umer goods in the centres of distribution, when there is still scarcity in society, the first few thousand who got to the centres would be able to satisfy their hunger, but thousands of others would be reduced to famine. Thus even an equitable distribution demands rules for rationing and thus ‘func­tionaries’: the state which “supervises and records” that Lenin talked about.

The function of this state is not a revo­lutionary one, even if the existing politi­cal order is that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its intrinsic function is at best to stabilize, regularize, and institut­ionalize the existing social relations. The bureaucratic mentality in the transition period (and there is no state without bur­eaucrats) is hardly going to be characteri­zed by a revolutionary devotion. It will inevitably tend to be the same as that of all functionaries: it will be concerned with maintaining order, the stability of the laws which it has the task of applying ... and as far as possible, with the defence of its own privileges. The longer scarcity makes the state necessary, the more the conservative force of this apparatus will grow, and with it the tendency for all the characteristics of the old society to re-emerge.

In the Communist Manifesto Marx wrote:

“The development of the productive forces is the absolute pre-condition (for commu­nism) because without it one is merely socializing poverty and this poverty will give rise to a struggle for necessities, so that all the old dross will come back to the surface.”

The Russian Revolution, where the proleta­riat had to remain isolated, condemned to the most terrible scarcity, was a tragic, practical demonstration of this insight. But it also showed that the “old dross” would re-emerge precisely where it was be­lieved that the dictatorship of the prolet­ariat had its true incarnation: in the state and its bureaucracy.

Let us cite a witness whose testimony is all the more significant in that he was one of the main defenders of the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transitional state were identical, Leon Trotsky:

“The bureaucratic authority was based on the scarcity of consumer goods and the resulting struggle of all against all. When there were enough goods in the shops, customers could come at any time. When there weren’t enough commodities the cus­tomers had to queue at the door. When the queue became very long, there had to be a policeman to maintain order. This was the starting point of the soviet bureaucracy. It ‘knew’ whom to give things to and who had to be patient...

.. (the bureaucracy) arose at the begin­ning as the bourgeois organ of the work­ing class. Establishing and maintaining the privileges of the minority, it natu­rally took the best for itself: he who gives out the goods doesn’t go short.

Thus society gave birth to an organ which, going far beyond its necessary social function, became an autonomous factor and a source of great danger to the whole social body.” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed)

Certainly the next revolutionary movement won’t undergo material conditions as disas­trous as those which existed in Russia. But the necessity for a period of transition, a period of struggle against scarcity and pov­erty on the scale of the planet, is no less inevitable than the emergence of a state structure. The fact that the proletariat will have at its disposal a greater reserv­oir of productive forces in order to create the material conditions for communist soci­ety will be a vital element in weakening the state and its conservative influence. But it will not eliminate this characteris­tic. Thus it is extremely important for the proletariat to assimilate the lessons of the Russian Revolution, and to see the transit­ional state not as the supreme incarnation of the dictatorship but as an organ which it must subject to its dictatorship and from which it must maintain its organizational autonomy.

A force for stabilization, not transformations

But, you say, history shows that the state takes on a revolutionary function when the class which runs it is itself revolutionary:

“... in revolutionary epochs, as soon as a class has conquered power it stabi­lizes the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of its class interests. The state then takes on the function of the revolutionary class that has set it up. In other words, having crushed by terror the resistance of other classes, its despotic interven­tions allow the productive forces to develop -- by casting down obstacles in the way, by stabilizing and imposing through a monopoly of armed force a whole framework of laws and relations of pro­duction which allow the productive forces to grow and correspond to the interests of the new class in power. To give but one example, the French state in 1793 took on an eminently revolutionary role.” (Extract from E's Letter)

We can’t play with words here. To take on a revolutionary function and stabilize “a whole framework of laws and relations of production”....which “correspond to the interests of the new class in power” do not describe the same thing. From the moment when the struggle of a revolutionary class manages to establish a relation of force in society to its own advantage it is obvious that the legal framework, the state institution which has the function of stabilizing the existing relation of forces is obliged to translate this new state of affairs into laws and into interventions by the executive apparatus to make sure the laws are carried out. Any political action of any conse­quence in a society divided into classes, and thus headed by a state structure will be unable to attain its goal unless it is soo­ner or later concretized at the level of laws and state actions. Thus the state in France in 1793, for example, was obliged to legalize the revolutionary measures imposed by the actions of the revolutionary forces: execution of the King, law on suspects, and the terror against reactionary elements, requisitions and rationing, confiscation and sale of the goods of emigres, tax on the rich, ‘dechristianization’ and closing of the churches, etc. In the same way the sov­iet state in Russia took revolutionary mea­sures, like the consecration of soviet power and the destruction of the political power of the former ruling class, organization of the civil war against the White armies and so on.

But can we say that the state really took on the revolutionary function of the classes which set it up?

The question is whether these facts show that the state is only conservative when the ruling class is conservative and revo­lutionary when the latter is revolutionary? In other words, is it true that the state has no intrinsically conservative or revolu­tionary tendencies? If so it would simply be the institutional embodiment of the will of the politically dominant class, or to use Bukharin’s formulation about the state and the proletariat in the period of transition: “the collective reason of the working class ... has its material embodi­ment in the highest, all-embracing organiza­tion, its state power” (Economics of the Transition Period).

Let us look at these events a bit more closely, beginning with “the French state of 1793, by the measures it took, the most radical bourgeois state in history” (we will look at the Russian Revolution later).

The state of 1793 was the state of the Nat­ional Convention, set up at the end of 1792 after the removal of the monarchy by the Insurrectionary Commune of Paris and the terror it imposed: the Convention succeeded the state of the Legislative Assembly which had ‘organized’ the revolutionary war, but whose existence was put into question by the fall of the throne and the real power of the Insurrectionary Commune, whose dis­solution it tried in vain to proclaim (on 1 September the Legislative Assembly pro­claimed the dissolution of the Commune but had to revoke its decision on the same evening).

The Legislative Assembly had itself succee­ded the Constituent Assembly which, after proclaiming the abolition of seigneurial rights and adopting the universal declaration of the rights of man, had refused to proclaim the removal of the King.

Before seeing how the famous radical meas­ures of 1793 were taken, we have to say that the events leading from the conquest of power by the bourgeoisie in 1789 to the Convention of September 1792 don’t corres­pond to the simplistic description given by comrade E: “in revolutionary epochs, as soon as a class has conquered power, it sta­bilizes the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of its class interests”.

In reality, as soon as the bourgeoisie con­quered political power in 1789, a long and complex process began, in the course of which the revolutionary class far from “stabilizing” the state it had just set up, found itself forced to systematically chal­lenge the state in order to be able to carry out its historic mission.

Hardly had the state consecrated the new relations of forces imposed by the most dyn­amic elements of society (abolition of seig­neurial rights by the Constituent Assembly after the events of July in 1789 in Paris, for example) than the institutional frame­work stabilized by the state’s action show­ed itself to be insufficient, and became a fetter on the new developments of the revo­lutionary process (like the Constituent’s refusal to proclaim the elimination of the King, and its repression of the popular movement).

If between 1789 and 1793 the revolution needed three state forms (each one having various governments), it is precisely be­cause none of these states were able to “take on the function of the revolutionary class that has set it up”. Each new step forward in the revolution thus took the form of a struggle not only against the classes of the ancien regime, but also against the ‘revolutionary’ state and its legalistic, conservative inertia.

The year 1793 didn’t bring with it a stabi­lization of “the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of the bourgeoisie’s class interests”. On the contrary it corresponded to the high point of the destabilization of the state insti­tution. For real stabilization we had to wait for Napoleon with his juridical codes, his re-organization of the administration and his cry: “Citizens: The Revolution is fixed to the principles it began with. It is f finished!”1

And how could it have been any different? How could a genuinely revolutionary class avoid coming to blows with representatives of ‘order’ (even its own) in order to force it to transcend its administrative concerns, its juridical formalities, its preoccupations, in Engels’ words, with “moderating the conflict (between classes) ... keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’”?

To think that the state institution can be the ‘material embodiment’ of the revolutio­nary will of a class is as absurd as imagin­ing that a revolution can unfold in an ‘orderly’ manner. It means asking an organ whose essential function is to ensure the stability of social life to incarnate the spirit of subversion, a spirit which it is the state’s task to smother. It means asking a corps of bureaucrats to have the spirit of a revolutionary class.

A revolution is a formidable explosion of the living forces of society, who begin to take control of the destiny of the social organism, overturning without respect or hesitation all the institutions (even those created by the revolution) which stand in the way of the revolutionary process. The power of a revolution can be measured by the ability of a revolutionary class to avoid getting trapped in the legal prison of its initial conquests, to know how to deal as ruthlessly with the insufficiencies of its first steps as with the forces of the ancien regime. The political superiority of the bourgeois revolution in France to the English bourgeois revolution resides precisely in the ability of the former to avoid getting paralyzed by a fetishism of the state, to ceaselessly and pitilessly overturn its own state institutions.

But let us go back to the famous French state of 1793 and the measures it took be­cause it is the example comrade E gives to prove the ‘revolutionary’ capacities of state institutions; actually it is a stri­king example of just how powerless state institutions are in this field.

The truth is that the great revolutionary measures of 1793 were not taken on the initiative of the state, but against the state. It was the direct action of the most radical factions of the Parisian bour­geoisie, supported and often carried along by the immense agitation of the proletariat of the suburbs of Paris, which forced these measures to be carried out.

The Insurrectionary Commune of Paris was a body set up after the events of 9/10 August 1792 by the most radical elements of the bourgeoisie; it had at its disposal the armed force of the bourgeoisie, the Natio­nal Guard, and the armed sections, which were organs of the popular masses. It was this body, an organic expression of the revolutionary movement, which forced first the Legislative then the Convention -- whose accession it had provoked by terrorizing 90 per cent of the electors in the indirect system of universal suffrage to abstain from voting -- to carry through the most radical measures of the revolution. It was the Commune which provoked the fall of the King on 10 August 1792, which imprisoned the royal family in the Temple on the thir­teenth, which prevented itself from being dissolved by the state of the Legislative, which directly set up the revolutionary tribunals and the Terror of September 1792; it was the Commune which, in 1793, imposed on the Convention the execution of the King, the law on suspects, the proscription of the Girondins, the closing of the churches, the offical establishment of the Terror, etc, etc. And, to emphasize its character as a living force distinct from the state, it also imposed on the Convention the pre­eminence of Paris as “guide to the Nation and tutor to the Assembly”; the right of the “people” to intervene against “its representatives” if necessary, and, finally, the “right to insurrection”!

The example of Cromwell in England, dissolv­ing Parliament by force and putting a notice on the door saying ‘for hire’, is an expression of the same necessity.

If the events of 1792-3 show anything, it’s not that the state institution can be as revolutionary as the class which domi­nates it, but on the contrary that:

-- the more revolutionary this class is the more it is forced to come up against the conservative character of the state;

-- the more it has to take radical measures the more it is forced to refuse to submit to the authority of the state and to submit the state to its own dictatorship.

We said before that to take on a revolutio­nary function and to stabilize a whole framework of laws and relations of produc­tion ... which “correspond to the interests of the new class in power” are not the same. In revolutionary periods history has only resolved the difference between the two through a relation of force between the real revolutionary force, the class itself, and its juridical expression, the state.

Identifying with a stabilizing organ

Up to this point we have dealt with the conservative nature of the state on a gene­ral historical level. Returning to the period of transition from capitalism to communism we shall see just how much this antagonism between revolution and the state, embryonic or transient in past revolutions becomes much more profound and irreconcil­able in the communist revolution. Comrade E writes:

“The difficulty comes in when you affirm that ‘the state has a historic nature which is anti-communist and anti-prole­tarian’, that it is essentially conserva­tive, and that therefore the proletarian dictatorship ‘cannot find its authentic and total expression in a conservative instrument par excellence, the state’. Here, if you will pardon the brutality of my words, we see anarchism coming in through the window after being chased out the door.”

We will leave the polemical argument which calls our position an anarchist one: we’ve already dealt with this. Let us see why the proletariat can’t find its “authentic and total expression” in a conservative institu­tion.

We saw how during the bourgeois revolution there were moments in which, because of the conservative tendencies in the initial forms of its own state, the bourgeoisie was forced, through its most radical factions, to distance itself from the state institut­ion and impose its ‘despotic’ dictatorship not only on the other classes in society, but also on the state it had just set up.

However, the opposition between the bour­geoisie and the state could only be tempor­ary. The goal of the bourgeois revolutions, no matter how radical and popular they might be, could never be anything but the streng­thening and stabilization of the social or­der of which the bourgeoisie is the benefi­ciary. However great its opposition to the old ruling class might be, it only destabi­lizes society and the state in order to fix it more firmly later on, when it’s political power has been assured in a new social order, when it can develop its strength as an exploiting class without further hindrance.

Thus the revolutionary storm of 1793 was followed by the submission of the Insurrec­tionary Commune of Paris to the government of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety, then by the execution of Robespierre himself by the ‘reaction’ of Thermidor, finally end­ing up with the strong state under Napoleon, when the state and the bourgeoisie were fraternally intertwined in an absolute des­ire for order and stability.

In fact, the more the bourgeoisie’s system developed and consolidated itself, the more the bourgeoisie recognized its own reflection in the state, the guarantor of its privileges. The more the bourgeoisie became conservative the more it identified itself with its gendarme and administrator.

For the proletariat things are quite diffe­rent. The goal of the working class in power is neither to maintain its existence as a class nor to conserve the state, a pro­duct of the division of society into classes. Its declared objective is the abolition of classes and thus the disappearance of the state. The period of transition to commun­ism is not a movement towards the stabiliza­tion of proletarian power, but towards its disappearance. It flows from this not that the proletariat must not affirm its dictator­ship over the whole of society, but that it must use this dictatorship to permanently overturn the existing state of affairs. This movement of transformation has to con­tinue right up until the advent of communism: any stabilization of the proletarian revolu­tion means a reflux and the threat of death. Saint-Just’s famous saying, “those who make a revolution half-way are digging their own graves”, applies much more to the proleta­riat than to any other revolutionary class in history, because it is the first revolutionary class to be an exploited class.

Contrary to the ideas of Trotsky, who was unable to see the growth of the bureaucracy after 1917 as the main force of the counter­revolution, and talked about a ‘proletarian Thermidor’, there can be no ‘Thermidor’ in the proletarian revolution. For the bour­geoisie, Thermidor was a necessity which corresponded to its attempt to stabilize its own power. For the proletariat, any stabilization is not a culminating point or a success, but a weakness, and before long, a retreat in its revolutionary task.

The only moment when the stabilization of social relations can correspond to the inte­rests of the proletariat will be when the classless society has emerged. But then there will be no more proletariat, no more proletarian dictatorship, and no more state. This is why the proletariat can nev­er find in an institution whose function is to “moderate the conflict” between classes and stabilize the existing state of affairs “its authentic and total expression”.

Contrary to what happened with the bourgeoi­sie, the development of the proletarian revolution will not be measured by the streng­thening of the state, but on the contrary key the dissolution of the state into civil society, the society of free producers.

But the proletariat’s attitude to the state during the course of its dictatorship -- non-identification, autonomous organization in relation to the state, dictatorship over the state -- is different from that of the bourgeoisie, not only because for the first time the dissolution of the state is a neces­sity but also -- and without this such a necessity is but a pious wish -- because it is a possibility.

Divided by the private property and by the competition on which its economic rule is based, the bourgeoisie cannot engender for very long an organized body which incarnates its class interests outside the state. For the bourgeoisie the state is not only the defender of its rule over other classes, it is also the only place where it can unify its interests. Because of all the bourgeoi­sie’s private and antagonistic interests, only the state can express the interests of the whole class. This is why, although at a given moment, both in France and in Eng­land, the bourgeoisie could not do without the autonomous action of its most radical factions against the state it had set up in order to carry out its revolution, this state of affairs could not be allowed to persist for long. Otherwise it would have completely lost its political unity and strength; (witness the fate of the Insurrec­tionary Commune of Paris and its leaders once their dynamic revolutionary action had been accomplished).

The proletariat will not suffer from this impotence. Not having any antagonistic interests in its midst and finding its main strength in its autonomous unity, the proletariat can exist, united and powerful, without having recourse to an armed arbiter above itself. Its representation as a class can be found in itself, in its own unitary organs: the workers’ councils.

These councils can and must constitute the one and only organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In these councils alone will the proletariat be able to find “its authentic and total expression”.

The proletariat as a ruling class

Comrade E takes up Lenin’s positions in State and Revolution, which are themselves based on the writings and practical exper­ience of the proletarian movement. But he has done so by simplifying Lenin’s position in the extreme, by forgetting the political context in which it was written, and by leaving out the most important experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat: the Russian Revolution.

According to E, the greatest, richest moment in the history of the proletarian struggle hasn’t given the slightest reason to modify the formulations put forward by revolution­aries before October. The result is a gross simplication of the inevitable insufficien­cies of revolutionary theory prior to 1917, in an area where the only experience to go on was that of the Paris Commune. E writes:

“ ... the essence of his (Lenin’s) posi­tion is very simple: the proletariat makes itself the ruling class and creates its own state organ, which differs in form from previous states, but which has essentially the same function: the oppres­sion of other classes, violence concen­trated against them for the triumph of the interests of the ruling class, even if these interests are those of humanity as a whole.”

It is true that the essential function of the state has always been to maintain the oppression of the exploited classes by the exploiting class. But if you transpose this definition to the period of transition to communism, its insufficiency soon becomes apparent for two main reasons:

1. Because the class exerting its dictator­ship is not an exploiting class but an exploited class.

2. Because of the reason given above and because of the reasons we have already seen, the relationship between the prole­tariat and the state can’t be the same as it was with exploiting classes.

In State and Revolution Lenin was obliged to put forward this simple conception of the state, because of the polemic he was engaged in with Social Democracy. The latter, in order to justify their partici­pation in the government of bourgeois states, claimed that the state (and the bourgeois state in particular) was an organ of concil­iation between classes: from this they con­cluded that by participating in it and by increasing the electoral influence of work­ers’ parties you could transform the state into an instrument of the proletariat for the building of socialism. Lenin insisted that the state in class society was always the state of the ruling class, an apparatus for keeping that force in power, its armed force against other classes.

The thought of a revolutionary class, and especially that of an exploited revolutio­nary class, can never develop in the peace­ful world of scientific research. Since it is a weapon in its overall struggle, it can only express itself in violent opposition to the ruling ideology, the falsity of which it is constantly trying to demonstrate. This is why you will never find a revolutio­nary text which doesn’t take the form of a critique or a polemic in one way or another. Even the most ‘scientific’ parts of Capital were written in a spirit of critical strugg­le against the economic theories of the ruling class. Thus when we use revolutio­nary texts we have to see them in the con­text of the struggle they were a part of. Real, living polemic always leads to a polarization of thought around particular aspects of reality because they are the most important elements in a given struggle. But what is essential in one discussion not automatically essential in another. To take, word for word, formulations from a text dealing with a particular problem, and to apply them to other problems without situating them in their proper context usu­ally leads to aberrations; what was a neces­sary simplification in a polemic is, when transposed elsewhere, transformed into a theoretical absurdity. This is why exegesis is always an obstacle to revolutionary thought.

To transpose formulations from the polemic against Social Democracy for its participa­tion in the bourgeois state and its rejec­tion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and replant them in the problem of the rela­tionship between the working class and the state in the period of transition to commu­nism, is an example of this kind of error. It was an error which was committed quite often by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and by all the revolutionaries who were united in struggle against the treason of Social Democracy during World War I. It was understan­dable prior to October 1917, but not today.

The experience of the Russian Revolution has shown that the relationship of the proletariat in power to the state is quite different from that of exploiting classes. The proletariat affirms itself as the ruling class in society by exerting its dictator­ship. But the term ruling class here has a very different content from when it is app­lied to past societies. The proletariat is the ruling class politically, but not econo­mically. Not only can the proletariat not exploit any other class in society; to a certain extent it remains an exploited class itself.

Economically exploiting a class means deri­ving benefit from its labour to the detri­ment of its own satisfaction; it means depriving a class of part of the fruits of its labour and thus preventing it from en­joying them. After the seizure of power by the proletariat the economic situation will have the following two characteristics:

1. In relation to human needs (even using a minimum definition of not suffering from hunger, cold, or curable diseases), scar­city will reign over two-thirds of man­kind.

2. The most essential elements of world pro­duction will be carried on in the indus­trial regions by a minority of the population: the proletariat.

In these conditions, the movement towards communism will demand an enormous effort in production, which will be aimed on the one hand at satisfying human needs, and, on the other hand, (and linked to this first neces­sity) at integrating the immense mass of the population into the process of produc­tion. The majority of the population is unproductive either because it carries out unproductive functions under capitalism (in the advanced countries); or because capi­talism has been unable to integrate them into social production (as with the majority of the third world). Now, whether we are talking about increasing production of con­sumer goods or about producing means of pro­duction in order to be able to integrate the unproductive masses (the peasantry in the third world won’t be integrated into socialized production with wooden or metal ploughs, but with the most advanced indus­trial techniques which have still to be created) -- in either case, the weight of this effort will be on the shoulders of the proletariat.

As long as scarcity exists in the world and as long as the proletariat remains a frac­tion of society (as long as its condition has not generalized to the entire population of the planet), the proletariat will have to produce a surplus of goods (both consumer and producer goods) from which it will only benefit in the long term. Thus we can see that not only is the proletariat not an exploiting class -- it will still be an exploited class.

In past societies, the state tended to identify itself with the ruling class and the defence of its privileges to the extent that this class was economically dominant, that is, benefiting from the maintenance of the existing relations of production. In a society of exploitation, the state’s task of maintaining order is inevitably the maintenance of exploitation and thus of the privileges of the exploiter.

But during the period of transition to com­munism, although the maintenance of the existing economic relations can in the short term be a way of preventing a regres­sion from what the proletariat has already achieved (and this is why there will inevi­tably be a state in the period of transi­tion), it also means the continuation of an economic situation in which the proletariat bears the brunt for the subsistence and development of society.

Contrary to what happened in the past when the politically dominant class was a class which directly benefitted from the existing economic order, during the dictatorship of the proletariat there will be no economic basis for a convergence between the state and the politically dominant class. What’s more, as an organ which expresses society’s need for cohesion and the need to prevent the development of class antagonisms, the state will inevitably tend to oppose the immediate interests of the working class on an economic level. During the Russian Revolution the state increasingly insisted on a greater and greater effort in production by the proleta­riat in order to meet the demands of exchange with the peasants or with the foreign powers. This state of affairs led right from the beginning to workers’ strikes being repres­sed which clearly showed how great an anta­gonism can arise between the proletariat and the state.

This is why the proletariat cannot see the state, in Bukharin’s terms, as “the material embodiment of its collective reason”, but as an instrument of society which won’t be ‘automatically’ subjected to its will, as was the case with exploiting classes once their political rule had definitely been assured; an instrument which it must cease­lessly subject to its control and dictator­ship if it doesn’t want to see it turn against it, as it did in Russia.

A dictatorship over the state

But, says the last argument of comrade E, a state which is subjected to a dictator­ship outside itself won’t have the means to carry out its role. If state and dictator­ship are not identical, there is no real dictatorship.

“You accept the dictatorship of the pro­letariat, but you forget that state and the exclusive dictatorship of a class are synonymous ... It is thus a nonsense to talk about a state subjected to a dictatorship which is external to it, and which cannot therefore intervene despotically in economic and social rea­lity in order to impose a definite class orientation.”

It is true that there cannot be a class dictatorship of any kind without the exis­tence of a state institution in society; first because the division of society into classes implies the existence of a state, secondly because any class in power requires an apparatus which will translate its power in society into a framework of laws and constraint: the state. It is also true that a state which does not have any real power is not a state. But it is wrong to say that class dictatorship is identical to the state and that “a state subjected to a dictatorship which is external to it” is “nonsense”.

The situation of dual power (that of a class on the one hand and of the state on the other) has, as we have seen, already existed in history, particularly during the great bourgeois revolutions. And, for all the reasons we have seen, it will be a neces­sity during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Such a situation cannot last indefinitely without leading society into inextricable contradictions which will devour it. It is a living contradiction which must be resol­ved. But the way it is resolved differs fundamentally according to whether we are dealing with the bourgeois revolution or the proletarian revolution.

In the bourgeois revolution the situation of dual power is quickly resolved by an identi­fication between the power of the ruling class and the state power, which emerges from the revolutionary process strengthened and invested with supreme power over society, including over the ruling class.

In the proletarian revolution, on the other hand, it is resolved by the dissolu­tion of the state, the taking over of the whole of social life by society itself.

There is a fundamental difference here, which expresses itself in a different rela­tionship between the state and the ruling class in the proletarian revolution -- a difference not only of form but also of con­tent.

In order to see these differences more clearly, we have to try to draw a broad outline of the forms of proletarian power during the period of transition in so far as they have been revealed by the historic ex­perience of the proletariat. Without trying to go into the institutional details of this period -- because if there is one major characteristic of revolutionary periods, it is that all institutional forms can be red­uced to empty shells which the living forces of society fill up or overturn according to the needs of class struggle -- it is pos­sible to put forward the following general outline.

Tile direct organ of proletarian power will be constituted by the unitary organizations of the class, the workers’ councils. These are assemblies of delegates, elected and revocable by all the workers which include all those who produce in a collective fash­ion in the socialized sector -- workers of the old society and those integrated into the collectivized sector as the revolution develops. Armed in an autonomous manner, these are the authentic instruments of the proletarian dictatorship.

The state institution is constituted at the base by councils formed not on a class basis, not in relation to the place occupied in the process of production (the proleta­riat must forbid any class organizations except its own), but on a geographical basis. This means assemblies and councils of dele­gates of the population based on neighbour­hood, town, region and so on culminating in a central council which will be the central council of the state.

Emanating from these institutions will be the whole state apparatus responsible for maintaining order -- the army during the civil war, the whole body of functionaries responsible for the administration and man­agement of production and distribution.

This apparatus of gendarmes and function­aries will be more or less important, more or less dissolved into the population itself according to the development of the revolu­tionary process, but it would be an illu­sion to ignore the inevitability of their existence in a society which still has classes and scarcity.

The dictatorship of the proletariat over the transitional state is the ability of the working class to maintain the arms and autonomy of its councils in relation to the state and to impose its will on it (both on its central organs and its functionaries).

The dual power situation resulting from this will be resolved to the extent that the whole of the population is integrated into the proletariat and its councils. As abundance develops the role of the gend­armes and other functionaries will disappear, “the government of men” will be replaced by the “administration of things” by the pro­ducers themselves. As the power of the proletariat grows, the power of the funct­ionaries and the state will diminish, and the proletariat’s absorption of the whole of humanity trill transform its class power into the conscious activity of the human community.

But for such a process to take place, not only must the material conditions exist (in particular the world extension of the revo­lution and the development of the product­ive forces), but also the proletariat, the essential motor-force of this whole process, must know how to conserve and develop its autonomy and its power over the state. Far from being nonsense, the ‘external’ dic­tatorship over the state by the workers’ councils is the very movement towards the withering away of the state.

The Russian Revolution did not achieve the material conditions for this to happen. But the enormous difficulties it came up against highlighted the intrinsic tendencies of the state apparatus, which grew in strength the more these difficulties multiplied.

Immediately after October 1917 in Russia there were the workers’ councils, the pro­tagonists of October, and the state councils, the general soviets and their developing state apparatus. But, following the idea that the state could not be distinct from the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers’ councils transformed themselves into state institutions by integrating themselves into the state apparatus. With the development of the power of the bureau­cracy, a result of the absence of the mat­erial conditions for the development of the revolution, the opposition between the pro­letariat and the state became more and more flagrant. It was believed that you could resolve this antagonism by as much as pos­sible putting the most experienced and res­olute workers, the members of the party, in the state apparatus instead of the functionaries. The result was not the proleta­rianization of the state, but the bureaucratization of the revolutionaries. At the end of the civil war, the development of the antagonism between the working class and the state led to the state’s repression of wor­kers’ strikes in Petrograd and then of the workers’ insurrection at Kronstadt, which demanded, among other things, measures against the bureaucracy and the recall of delegates to the soviets.

This does not mean that if only the prole­tariat had defended the autonomy of its workers’ councils from the state and had imposed its dictatorship over the state in­stead of seeing the latter as it’s “material embodiment” then the revolution would have been victorious in Russia.

The dictatorship of the proletariat wasn’t wiped out because of its inability to res­olve the problems of its relationship with the state but because of the failure of the revolution in other countries, which condem­ned it to isolation. However, its exper­ience of this crucial problem was neither useless nor a ‘particular case’ which has no significance for the proletarian movement as a whole. The Russian experience threw a vivid light on this question which was so terribly confused in revolutionary theory. Not only did the workers’ councils give a practical response to the problem of the forms of proletarian power; it also made it possible to resolve what appears to be a contradiction in the lessons Marx, Engels and Lenin drew from the Paris Commune. On the one hand these revolutionaries affirmed that the state was the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and on the other hand, they concluded from the exper­ience of the Commune that the proletariat must guard against “the harmful effects” (Engels) of this state by subjecting all its functions to the control of the proletariat. If the state is identical to the dictator­ship of the proletariat, why should the class show any distrust towards it? How can the dictatorship of a class have effects contrary to its own interests?

In fact, the need to clearly distinguish the dictatorship of the proletariat from the state and for the former to exert a dictatorial control over the latter can already be found in embryonic or intuitive form in the writings of revolutionaries be­fore October. Thus in State and Revolution Lenin was led to talk about a distinction between something which would be “the state of armed workers” and something else which would be “the state of bureaucrats”.

“Until the ‘higher’ phase of communism arrives, the Socialists demand the stric­test control by society and by the state of the measure of labour and the measure of consumption; but this control must start with the expropriation of the capi­talists, with the establishment of work­ers’ control over the capitalists, and must be exercised not by a state of bur­eaucrats but by a state of armed workers.”

And in another part of the same work, where he tries to make a comparison between the economy in the transitional period and the organization of the post under capitalism, he affirms the necessity for this body of functionaries to be controlled by the armed workers:

“The whole national economy organized like the post office, so that technicians, supervisors, accountants receive, like all functionaries, remuneration which does not exceed a ‘workers’ wage’, and all this under the control and direction of the armed proletariat. This is our immediate goal.” (our emphasis)

The Russian Revolution showed tragically that what appears as a theoretical contra­diction in revolutionary thought could be­come a real contradiction between the dic­tatorship of the proletariat and the transi­tional state: it showed clearly that “the control and direction” of the state by the armed proletariat is an absolute precondi­tion for the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

***********

Comrade E certainly considers that he is remaining loyal to the theoretical effort of the proletariat such as it was prior to October 1917, and in particular to Lenin’s State and Revolution which he has defended intransigently. But it is departing from the whole spirit of this effort when one re­fuses, almost on principle, to criticize these theoretical acquisitions in the light of the greatest experience of the dictator­ship of the proletariat in history. To conclude we can do no better than recall what Lenin wrote in State and Revolution about the attitude revolutionaries should have to this problem:

“Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards who, as he expressed it, ‘stormed heaven’. Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous im­portance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a prac­tical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. To analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it, to re-examine his theory in the light of it -- that was the task that Marx set himself.”

R.V.

1 And the French state went though further convulsions against the Restoration which followed the Napoleonic Empire, in 1830 and in 1848.

Life of the ICC:

The Meaning of the Second Congress of the ICC

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We are publishing here the major texts of the Second Congress of the International Communist Current. The Congress was mainly devoted to re-examining and confirming the general orientation of the ICC. It was a moment when the whole international organ­ization could draw up a balance sheet of its past activities and outline perspectives for the coming period.

The Second Congress vigorously reaffirmed the validity of the basic principles upon which the ICC was founded a year and a half ago:

* the political platform of the ICC

* statutes for an internationally centralized and unified revolutionary organization

* the Manifesto of the First Congress, which called on revolutionaries to be aware of their tasks in the decisive issues at stake in the present period of crisis and class struggle1

Only such a coherent set of principles can provide a firm basis for revolutionary activity, and the Second Congress gave itself the task of applying these principles to an analysis of the present political situation.

The texts of the Congress speak for them­selves, but their full significance can only be understood if it is seen as the result of the collective work of a revolut­ionary organization. The methodical elaboration of an overall perspective, as well as the translation of this perspective into an active intervention, necessitates the creation of a collective and organized framework. In this context the Congress was able to see the general growth of the organization in its eight territorial sections, in particular the development of the ICC’s work in Spain, Italy, Germany and Holland, as a confirmation of the orientat­ion that the Current has been defending and carrying out for some time. More important than mere numerical growth has been the ICC’s capacity over the last eighteen months to disseminate its analyses in ninety-five issues of its publications in seven languages, distributed nearly all over the world.

The texts here are also the fruits of a long and continuous political and theoretical effort in the ICC to develop its under­standing of the problems the class struggle will pose in the future, especially in the period of transition to socialism. These texts are the crystallization of a year and a half’s discussion both within the ICC and with other political currents. The attempt to constantly raise the political level of the ICC, in a homogeneous way which involves the whole organization and all its militants, has been and continues to be one of the most crucial aspects of our work, because it’s the only way that revolutionaries can contribute to theoretical clarification in the workers’ movement.

As part of both its organizational effort and theoretical research, the Second Congress attempted to come to a better understanding of the contemporary revolution­ary milieu, in order to further the ICC’s efforts towards regroupment. We thus put forward these documents in the light of recent important attempts to organize discussion between proletarian political groups. In May 1977, the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista) called an international discussion conference2 in which the ICC participated. Other invited groups (such as the Communist Workers’ Organization and Fomento Obrero Revolucionario) were unfortunately unable to attend, while others (like Pour Une Intervention Communiste) refused to come, but the debate that took place on the present period and its implications for the class struggle, on the role of the unions and on the organization of revolutionaries, made it possible to eliminate misunderstand­ings, define areas of agreement, and see the reasons behind divergences. Following this limited but useful effort at clarification, the ICC welcomed a delegation from Battaglia Comunista to its Second Congress, where these comrades were able to carry on the debate in front of the whole Current. The develop­ment of the class struggle today is making the need for international contacts be felt in a much sharper way in the revolutionary milieu. In September 1977, several Swedish and Norwegian groups organized a discussion conference in which the ICC participated.

Another thing that has been verified by the experience of the last year or so is the failure of those who have theorized isolat­ion. Those who in 1975 rejected regroupment and even any contact with the ICC -- the PIC in France, CWO in Britain, and the Revolutionary Workers’ Group in the USA - have long since fallen out amongst themselves, their anti-ICC association having ended in total sterility. The RWG dissolved after various modernist transmutations. Over the last year the CWO has reaped the fruits of the confused and sectarian fusion between Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers’ Voice: the collapse of its national ‘regroupment’ into two halves. Over the last summer, the remainder of the CWO has gone through a second split; this time those who left the CWO defend the necessity for regroupment, and in particular have ex­pressed a desire to initiate a discussion with the ICC in this regard3.

In this general context, we present the texts of the Congress, which deal with three main themes:

* A report on the international situation, which traces the evolution of the tendency towards state capitalism in both major blocs; in other words, the development of the war economy, which is capital’s response to the crisis and to inter-imperialist antagonisms which are moving from local wars to­wards a generalized conflict. We are trying to develop in the light of contemporary events, the analysis of the war economy made by the communist left in the 1930’s.

* A resolution on proletarian political groups, which attempts to define the various elements who make up today’s revolutionary milieu, elements which are very different from the mass parties of yesterday. The text situat­es the ICC in the more general context of the development of class conscious­ness, and underlines our desire to reject the sectarianism and exclusivity so dear to currents like the Bordigists. This resolution deals with political groups and not the discussion circles which arise in the working class. These ephemeral products, which are historical expressions of the weak influence revo­lutionary organizations have in the class today, will be examined more specifically in other texts.

* On the period of transition from capit­alism to communism, the reader will find two drafts synthesizing the level of discussion reached within the ICC. Although the orientation of the first text is agreed upon by the majority of the organization, the Congress decided not to take a formal vote on this question, considering that the most important thing now is to take the discussion further, and to do this publically. Our main aim is to go on with theoretical clarification, not only in the ICC, but also by encourag­ing other revolutionary currents and elements to make their contribution to this complex debate.

We present these documents today without any megalomania or any overestimation of the importance of this Congress. Communist minorities do not yet have an immediate impact on the general situation, but the development of analytical work and the setting up of an organizational framework with a long term perspective are a contrib­ution to and the best preparation for the decisive confrontations of tomorrow.

2 See International Review no. 10, and the forthcoming pamphlet Texts of the International Conference (roneo-editions in French and English, and in French and Italian in a special issue of Prometeo)

3 The texts of this split and a discussion of their significance will be published in the next issue of International Review as well as in Revolutionary Perspectives (journal of CWO). We will also be publishing in the same issue the reply by the remainder of the CWO to our critique on them in nos. 9 and 10 of the International Review.

Life of the ICC:

International Review no.8 - 1st quarter 1977

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COMBATE: 'Against the stream' ... or against the ICC?

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In a recent letter, the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops of the group Combate in Portugal informed us of their decision to stop selling publications of the ICC. It's not the usual practice of the ICC to go into such details in its publications, although we don't share the contempt displayed by the 'modernists' for what they call 'a concern for political merchandise'. On the contrary, we think that the widest possible dissemination of the revolutionary press is an important contribution to clarification and thus constitutes an elementary political preoccupation. Moreover, as long as revolutionary groups remain as a small minority, it would be difficult for them to carry on publishing unless they maintain some level of sales.

But the reason why we are discussing Combatels letter here is to publicly raise the question: why has Combate decided to close its bookshops to us? In their letter, we find only a refusal, not an explanation.

On a purely practical level we can say that with the reflux in class struggle in Portugal, revolutionary publications are not selling as well as they did between 1974-5. Therefore it had seemed necessary to reduce the number of copies being sent to the bookshops (a decision taken in common between Combate and the ICC comrades who went to Portugal last summer). But it's quite another thing to ban all sales. Only a bourgeois bookshop can use as its one criterion the idea that if publications don't sell quickly enough and in sufficient quantities, they and their contents are a waste of time. But the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops in Oporto and Lisbon belong to a group which claims to be revolutionary, to be interested in making the ideas of communist tendencies more accesible to workers. Thus we think we should drop any 'practical' hypothesis as an explanation for this decision.

On a political level, the ICC has never hidden its criticisms of Combate - either verbally when we met with these comrades, or in our press. Despite all the weaknesses and confusions which we pointed out in the article on Combate in International Review no.71, we have always considered Combate as one of the only groups in Portugal which defends class positions: the denunciation of the mystifications of the Armed Forces Movement, of the trade union and left-wing apparatus of capital, and the defence of autonomous workers' struggles and of proletarian internationalism. This is why we made contact with Combate and put militants from other countries in contact with them. But the main weakness of Combate - its lack of clarity on the need to constitute an organization on the basis of a coherent political platform - has inevitably led it into a certain localism, an ambiguous support for 'self-management' experiences, a growing confusion about the orientation of revolutionary activity. Indeed we have said that if Combate continues to theorize its errors, they will be unable to:

" … put up much resistance against the terrible contradiction between their own revolutionary principles and the immense pressure of bourgeois ideology, which they have allowed to penetrate their ranks by refusing to give these principles a clear and coherent basis founded on the historic experience of the class." (International Review no.7)

Our criticisms of Combate are part of an effort to contribute to the clarification of revolutionary positions within the working class. Is Combate so 'sensitive' that these criticisms have made it close the door to the ICC? The ICC only engages in a confrontation of ideas with groups which belong to the proletarian camp, despite all the confusions they may have. We don't polemicize with Stalinism, Trotskyism, or Maoism; we simply denounce them as ideological arms of capital. And we are not surprised when bookshops directly or indirectly under the control of Stalinists or Trotskyists refuse to take our publications or - as happened with a bookshop in Boston - the Trotskyists send our magazines back to us after tearing up the articles on Vietnam. It's a waste of time asking the bourgeoisie to be 'democratic'. But has Combate also begun to use administrative measures in order to settle political accounts?

In the discussions we had with Combate, Combate reproached the ICC for being fixated on the need to create an international organization on the basis of clear, tested class positions. According to some of its members, we are a vestige of the 'old conception' of a revolutionary organization, obsessed with ourselves, sectarian, unable to “open ourselves up to the new gains of the struggle", especially in Portugal. We regret that our intransigence about political class positions and our concern for the regroupment of revolutionaries has found no echo in Combate. We also regret that Combate seems to be much more interested in groups whose main characteristic is a political fluidity and a search for 'novelties' like the 'self-management' ideas of Solidarity in Britain, or of other libertarians without a clear political definition. Maybe we must draw the conclusion that there are no worse demagogues than those claiming to be 'libertarian', until differences lead them to take repressive measures? To accuse us of being the sectarians seems to be too easy an alibi.

It should be pointed out that the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops don't only distribute revolutionary publications. One can understand that in the capitalist world today it's impossible to run a bookshop which only sells communist publications. Consequently, Contra-a-Corrente sells publications of all kinds: psychology, novels, books by Stalin and Mao, texts by Trotsky, as well as the publications of Solidarity, the Communist Workers Organization, and the ICC, in Portuguese and in other languages. Are we to understand that the working class in Portugal needs to read the sophistries of the counter-revolution written by Stalinists or Trotskyists, but that it has to be 'protected' from the ICC? That the rabble of Stalinism are given the means to disseminate their mystifications but that a revolutionary voice must be silenced? Then you would have to put a sign on the doors of the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops saying: "There is no greater enemy of the working class than the ICC and that's why you won't find its press here!"

What's at stake in this discussion is not simply the distribution of ICC material. Whatever happens, our press will get distributed in Portugal. But the kind of attitude shown by Combate is not worthy of people who are attempting to rediscover the path of revolution. It is repugnant that Combate should take such decisions without any explanation. There are too many groups today who claim to be revolutionary but whoset themselves up as the judges and censors of the revolutionary movement: the CWO is a flagrant example of this with their unfortunate conviction that all those who don't agree with them are part of the counter-revolution. We have to fight against this tendency for everyone to establish their 'own' class frontiers in order to defend the interests of their little sect. Today, when the working class must have a clear political orientation if it is to act in time in the face of the crisis, when after fifty years of the barbarism of the counter-revolution there is at last an opening in history, it is lamentable that groups like Combate should remain content with confused political positions and fall so easily into taking repressive measures against other political tendencies, measures which recall the 'good old days' of Stalinism.

We thus openly ask Combate to reconsider this ban on our press and repudiate this aberrant decision.

30 November 1976

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT

Letter from Combate

Dear Comrades,

In a meeting a few days ago the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops (in Oporto and in Lisbon) decided that they would no longer sell RI or any other publications of your Current; in future we only want to receive two copies of RI for the archives; we will try to pay you for what we have sold as soon as possible. Until the next time. (A bientot)F.S.

LIVRARIA CONTRA-A-CORRENTE Oporto, 9 September 1976

1 This article, 'Combate: the Peaceful Road to Self-Management', was written in the summer before the letter from Combate had arrived, and published after it had been received. It thus plays no particular rolein the bookshop affair except as a general resume of discussion and criticism.

The texts on the international situation and the period of transition which we are publishing in this issue of the International Review were presented to the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale, the ICC's section in France. These two themes were the main focus of interest in the work of the Congress. They were put on the agenda of the Congress not as purely theoretical questions but as a response to the real situation in which we find ourselves today. The present evolution of the crisis of capital - which is simply the continuation of the system's decay – is demonstrating more and more clearly that the only way out of the crisis is the revolution. The inexorable development of the crisis, which no one tries to deny anymore, will force the proletariat to once again take up the weapons of its historic struggle. At a time when capital has given up talking about the 'good times' ahead and is simply asking the workers everywhere to 'pull in their belts', the revolution no longer appears as a distant possibility but as a vital necessity.The content of sociaiism, the problems posed by the victory of the revolution, are going to become increasingly important preoccupations for revolutionaries, It is these problems - the analysis of the situation which leads up to the revoiution and the initial problems posed by the seizure of power - which the Congress attempted to deal with, These two aspects of the future - the situation before and after the revolution - are intimateiy connected with each other, because the present evolution of the crisis, by making the revolution a more and more concrete perspective, will oblige the proletariat to consider the content of the revolution as a reai and urgent question.

This is indicated by the fact that today a number of groups have begun to realize the importance of the problems of the transition period. Groups like the PlC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste), the CWO (Communist Workers' Organization), and the Spartakusbond have written articles on this question, which only a few years ago was practically ignored by the newly emerging revolutionary movement. Reality itseif has given rise to this need for clarification. The full reality of the crisis had to become quite obvious before eiements of the class like ICO (Informations Correspondance Ouvrieres), GLAT (Groupe de Liaison pour l'Action des Travailleurs), Alarma, or the situationists, who in 1968-9 used to make ironic comments about the 'apocalyptic prophecies' of RI, would be forced to recognlze the crisis and discuss it. Similarly it is the present evolution of the situation which is impelling various groups today to recognize and examine the problems of the revolution. "Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve." It is the real situation which demands that the proletariat becomes aware of its interests and its tasks; it is the real situation which forces revolutionaries to fulfil their responsibilities in the development of this awareness.

The development of the situation will therefore increasingly confront the workers movement with the problem of the content of the revolution. Who takes power, what form does this powertake, how will it be organized, what are the first measures to be taken - all these questions will have to be raised and discussed as widely as possible. We can only begin to answer these questions by basing ourselves on the experience ofthe past. These questions must be approached in an extremely serious manner, and the responsibility of revolutionaries in this work is emphasized by the rupture in organic continuity with the past workers' movement, which has left the present workers' movement in a state of ignorance about the acquisitions of its own past. For several years now RI has been engaged in a discussion on the period of transition: this discussion has culminated in the passing of the resolution published in this Review, and the resolution is in turn a contribution to the discussion that is going on in the ICC and in the working class as a whole.

Concerning the texts on the international situation, the first, which deals with the world political situation, is an attempt to make a synthesis of the discussions on current events which have taken place in the ICC this year, and to highlight the various general factors which determine each particular situation. It is in this sense a methodological text which seeks to develop instruments for understanding any political situation that might arise. The second text examines the economic situation of capital at this juncture.

We can thus see that the Second Congress of RI didn't restrict itself to the specific problems of the section in France. The Congress was seen as an integral part of the work of the ICC as a whole. We published the texts which related more directly to the French section in Revolution Internationale no.32 (and the text on the situation in France also appeared in World Revolution no.9), but the following texts are of a general international interest, and we are publishing them in our international press as a contribution to the workers' movement as a whole. CN

The International Political Situation

1. For years the appointed spokesmen of the bourgeoisie tried to exorcize the demons of the crisis with their pseudo-scientific incantations. By handing out the Nobel Prize and other honours to its most cretinously complacent economists, the bourgeoisie hoped that reality would concur with its aspirations. But today the crisis of capitalism has become so blatant that even the most 'confident' and 'optimistic' sectors of the ruling class have had to admit not only its existence but also its severity. Because of this the task of revolutionaries today is not to proclaim the inevitability of the crisis, but to underline the bankruptcy of all the theories which sprang up like mushrooms after the rain during the fake 'prosperity' of the post-war reconstruction period.

2. Among the more fashionable theories of the bourgeoisie, those of the neo-Keynesian school were surely the most favoured. They promised an era of unlimited prosperity on the basis of judicious state intervention in the economy through various budgetary mechanisms. Since 1945, intervention of this kind has indeed been the rule in all countries: but the present economic crisis is shattering the illusions held by disciples of the man the bourgeoisie called: "the greatest economist of the twentieth century."

On a more general level, the present situation is exposing all those bankrupt theories which saw the state as the instrument that would save the capitalist system from its own internal contradictions. State capitalism - which these theories presented as simply the prolongation of the process of capital concentration which began in the ascendant period of capitalism, or even as a 'transcendence of the law of value' – is increasingly being revealed for what it always has been since its appearance during World War I: the essentially political expression of an economic system at the end of its tether, the desperate attempt of capitalism to retain a minimum of cohesion and to ensure not the expansion of the system but simply its survival.

The violent way in which the world crisis is now hitting those countries where state capitalism is most developed is more and more dispelling any illusions about their 'socialist' nature, or about the supposed ability of 'planning' or a 'monopoly on foreign trade' to end the anarchy of capitalism. In these countries it's becoming harder and harder to cover up unemployment by underutilizing the labour force. The authorities are now openly and officially recognizing the existence of this classical capitalist scourge. At the same time, rising prices which until recently have only affected the private sector market, are now hitting the official market in a spectacular manner. The economies of these countries which were supposed to be able to stand above the convulsions of world capital are now proving to be extremely fragile; poorly equipped to face up to the exacerbation of commercial competition. Despite the claims of their leader about 'overtaking the capitalist west' these economies have in recent years run up enormous debts with the west, which makes them more or less bankrupt today. This vast state of debt is a ringing refutation of all those theories which - sometimes in the name of 'marxism' - forgot that the general saturation of the market is not a phenomenon specific to this or that region of the world, and which saw the so-called 'socialist’ countries as a miraculous outlet for the resolution of capitalism's problems.

3. Since the end of the I960s, when it first began to become aware of its economic difficulties, the bourgeoisie has repeated over and over again that the present situation is fundamentally different from that of 1929. Terrified by the idea that it might enter another 'depression', it has tried to console itself by emphasizing all the differences between today's crisis and the crisis of the I930s. Thus the bourgeoisie has been trying to fixate on different aspects and stages of the crisis; it began by talking about a simple 'crisis in the monetary system' and then about the 'oil crisis', which was held responsible both for galloping inflation and the recession.

But in contrast to the explanations given by most 'experts' of the ruling class, it is clear that the crises of 1929 and of today do have the same underlying nature: both are part of the infernal cycle of the capitalist mode of production in its epoch of decadence, the cycle of crisis-inter-imperialist war-reconstruction-crisis, etc. They are both expressions of the fact that, after a period of reconstructing the productive apparatus destroyed by imperialist war, capitalism is unable to find outlets for its production on a saturated world market. The differences between the two crises are purely circumstantial. In 1929, the saturation of the market manifested itself through the collapse of private credit, in turn expressed through the collapse of the stock exchange. After an initial panic massive state intervention in the mechanisms of the economy permitted a temporary recovery; this took the form of armaments production and public works programmes, as in Hitler's Germany or the American New Deal. But these policies reached their own inherent limits because the reserves of the state were not inexhaustible: by 1938 the Treasuries were empty and the world economy plunged into a new depression, from which it emerged only because of the war …

In the period after World War II, state intervention was not relaxed as it had been after the first war. In particular, arms expenditure retained a crucial role in the economy. This explains the structural inflation which has existed in the system since 1945. Such inflation expresses the growing weight of unproductive expenditure necessary for the system's survival which leads to an increasingly generalized state of debt, especially on the part of the state machine when the period of reconstruction ends and the market is saturated, the only escape route open to the system is the accumulation of huge anticipatory debts which transform structural inflation into galloping inflation. Henceforth capitalism has no alternative but to oscillate between this inflation and recession as soon as the governments try to intervene. This is why 'recovery' and 'austerity' plans succeed each other at a growing pace in time with the system's catastrophic convulsions. At the present stage of the crisis, inflation and recession are more and more hitting national economies simultaneously and not one after the other.

Systematic state intervention has avoided the collapse of private credit which took place in 1929. Obfuscated by mere epiphenomena, unable to understand the fundamental laws of its own economy, the bourgeoisie does not see itself faced by a new 1929 …for the simple reason that it is already in the situation of 1938!

4. The present situation of the world economy also invalidates an idea which was defended even amongst revolutionaries, namely that the present crisis is a ‘crisis of reconstruction' - not meaning that it has no solution except a transformation of the structure of society itself, but that it is a result of a rearrangement of the existing economic structures. In this conception, state capitalist measures are often presented as a means for the system to overcome its contradictions.

At the end of the 1960s such theories could have a certain credibility; today they just look like intellectual gimmicks. The managers of the bourgeois economy would be wretched sorcerers' apprentices if they alone had plunged the world into the present state of chaos just to 'restructure' the economy.

In fact, in every sphere, the situation today is far worse than it was five years ago, which in turn was a considerable come-down from the situation ten years ago. If the conditions which began ten years ago led to the situation we were in five years ago, and if the conditions of five years ago have in turn led to the present situation, it's impossible to see how the present conditions - in which recession, debt, and inflation have never been worse - could lead to some kind of amelioration of the capitalist economy.

Nobel prize-winning economists, and those 'revolutionaries' who threw marxism on the scrap-heap because they thought they had gone beyond it, might as well resign themselves to the fact that there is no way out of the crisis and that it can only get worse.

5. Although the present crisis can only deepen inexorably, although no measure the ruling class might take can change its direction, the bourgeoisie is forced to adopt a series of policies aimed at assuring some kind of defence of the national capital amid the general panic and at slowing down the process of deterioration.

Because the crisis is the result of the conflict between the limitations of the world market and the expansion of capitalist production any defence of a national capital's interests must be based on a strengthening of its competitive abilities in relation to other national capitals; this also involves pushing its own difficulties onto others. Apart from the external measures aimed at improving its position on the international arena, each national capital must, on the internal level, put into effect policies which help to reduce the price of its commodities in relation to those of other countries; this requires cutting the costs of production. A fall in the costs of production in turn demands a maximum return on capital and a reduction of a country's over-al consumption; and this means, on the one hand an attack on the most backward sectors or production and on the middle classes as a whole and, on the other hand, an attack on the living standards of the working class.

There are thus three aspects to the policies of the bourgeoisie: deflecting difficulties onto other countries, onto the intermediate strata, and onto the working class. The common denominator of all three is the strengthening of the tendency towards state capitalism, which the bourgeoisie everywhere is trying to put into effect. The resistance against this, and the contradictions it gives rise to explain how the economic crisis is leading to a political crisis which is becoming more and more generalized today.

6. The first aspect of the response to the crisis by the bourgeoisie of each country - the attempt to deflect its problems onto other countries - comes up against the immediate and obvious problem that it is met by the same effort on the part of all the other national bourgeoisies! It can only lead to an intensification of economic rivalry between countries which inevitably has repercussions in the military sphere. But no single nation can be in opposition to all the other nations of the world, whether it be on the economic level or, still less, on the military level. This is why there are imperialist blocs, and these blocs inevitably tend to strengthen themselves as the crisis deepens.

The division of the world into these blocs does not necessarily correspond to the main economic rivalries which continue to intensify (thus Western Europe, USA, and Japan, the main economic rivals, are all in thesame imperialist bloc). But even though military conflict between the countries of one bloc can't be ruled out (eg. Israel and Jordan in 1967, Greece and Turkey in 1974), these economic tensions do not override the military 'solidarity' between the main countries of a bloc when they are confronted with the other bloc. If the intensification of economic rivalries between the countries of one bloc expresses itself in military terms, it only serves the interests of the other bloc; thus it expresses itself as a rule in the intensification of military rivalry between the blocs. In this situation, the defence of the national capital of each country tends more and more to come into conflict with the defence of the interests of the bloc as a whole. This constitutes another difficulty encountered by the bourgeoisie of each country in its attempts to put into effect the first aspect of its response to the crisis; and the only outcome can be the submission of national interests to the interests of the bloc.

7. The ability of each bourgeoisie to carry through this aspect of its policy is conditioned basically by the strength of its economy. This is expressed by the fact that the first waves of the crisis hit countries at the periphery of the system, the countries of the Third World. But as the crisis deepens, its effects begin to shake the industrial metropoles with increasing brutality; and here again it is those metropoles which have the most solid economic base that are best able to resist the crisis. Thus the 'recovery' u:t 1'175-76, which mainly benefited the USA and West Germany, was paid for by a catastrophic deterioration of the weakest European economies such as Portugal, Spain, and Italy; this increased these latter countries' dependence on the more powerful economies, above all on the USA. This economic superiority also expresses itself on the military level: not only do the weaker countries of each bloc have to subordinate themselves more and more to the most powerful country, but also the bloc which has the strongest economic base - ie. the American bloc - is advancing and strengthening itself at the expense of the other bloc. It is quite clear today, for example, that the much vaunted American 'defeat' in Vietnam was no more than a tactical withdrawal from an area which was of no great military and economic interest in order to reinforce American power in much more important areas like Southern Africa and the Middle East. The intensification of the crisis is thus silencing the chatter about 'national independence' which developed in countries like France during the reconstruction period; at the same time it is giving the lie to all the mystifications disseminated by the extreme left of capital about' national liberation' and a 'victory against American imperialism'.

8. The second aspect of the bourgeoisies' response to the crisis consists in trying to make the productive apparatus more profitable by acting against other social strata apart from the proletariat. On the one hand this involves an attack on the living standards of all the middle strata linked to non-productive sectors or small scale production; on the other hand it requires the elimination of economic sectors which are the most backward, the least concentrated, or which use the most archaic techniques. These heterogeneous social strata are essentially composed of small peasants, artisans, small capitalists and shopkeepers, whose incomes are often being reduced in a draconian way because of fiscal pressure and competition from more concentrated units of production and distribution. Quite often this has led to the ruin of these strata. Through state capitalist measures this policy can also hit the liberal professions, officers in the armed forces, certain elements in administration or the tertiary sector, as well as those factions of the ruling class which are most tied to the classical forms of individual property.

Such policies when executed by the national capital inevitably come up against resistance, sometimes extremely fervent, from all these strata. Although they are historically doomed and incapable of unifying themselves, these strata can have a considerable weight in political life. In particular, they can have an important, even decisive electoral influence in certain countries. They represent the main source of support for right-wing governments linked to 'classical' capitalism - governments which dominated most countries during the reconstruction period - or even a balancing force to governments of the left, particularly in Northern Europe. Because of this, the resistance put up by these social strata can act as a powerful obstacle in the way of state capitalist measures which governments desperately need to take. This obstacle can lead to a real paralysis in a government's ability to act which further serves to aggravate the political crisis of the ruling class.

9. The third aspect of capitalism's response to the crisis, attacking the living standards of the working class, is bound to become the most important since the proletariat is the main producer of social wealth. This policy, whose main aim is to reduce real wages and increase exploitation, manifests itself primarily through the inflation which is hitting consumer prices in goods most important to the working class ( food, etc.); through a massive increase in unemployment; through the elimination of certain 'social advantages' which are actually a part of the means of reproducing labour power and thus a part of wages; and finally through speed-ups in the pace of work which are sometimes extremely brutal.

This assault on the living standards of the working class is a reality which the capitalist class has to recognize; in fact it is the cornerstone of all its 'austerity' plans. This assault is actually much more violent than official figures dare admit, since these do not take into account the reductions in 'social advantages' (medical facilities, social security, housing, etc.), or the effects of unemployment which not only hits workers out of a job but the class as a whole since it means a general reduction in the variable capital available for the maintenance of labour power.

This situation is destroying another theory which had its hey-day in the period of reconstruction: the so-called refutation of the marxist prediction about the absolute pauperization of the proletariat. Today the consumption of the working class is being reduced and exploitation being increased, not in a relative but in an absolute manner.

10. Since around 1968-69, the capitalist attack on the working class has encountered a very lively response. This confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat determines the general direction which the current crisis is imposing on history, a direction which leads not to the imperialist war which followed the 1929 crisis but to class war. So, of the three aspects of the bourgeoisie's response to the crisis, the one which relates directly to the working class is going to become more and more important in the general political developments ahead. Especially where the proletariat is strongest, we are going to see capital making increasing use of its 'left' factions, those political forces best qualified to mystify and contain the working class, to impose on it the 'sacrifices' demanded by the economic situation. This need to call on the left will be most strongly felt in those industrialized countries whose economy makes it impossible to establish any kind of social 'consensus' or to inspire any confidence in capital's ability to overcome the crisis. In contrast to the more prosperous countries which are better able to resist the effects or the crisis and have less need for 'anti-capitalist' propaganda in their efforts to tie the workers to the defence of the national capital, the weaker countries are about to go through important changes in their political apparatus. However - and this is another contradiction which the ruling class has to deal with - these changes are being met with a determined resistance from the old governing clique; these cliques are doing everything they can to stay where they are or at least retain a position of importance, even if this works to the detriment of the national capital.

11. We can thus see how, in trying to put these three aspects of its strategy into effect, the bourgeoisie is coming up against a whole series of resistances and contradictions. Not only that, but each aspect of capital's strategy has its own internal contradictions. In some cases, there is a convergence between certain of these aspects: for example, state capitalist measures which are bound to hit the most backward sectors of capitalism also provide the left factions of capital with an opportunity to mystify the working class by presenting them as 'anti-capitalist' or 'socialist' measures. Similarly, it can be the case that a struggle against the most backward sectors of society is led by political forces who enjoy the confidence and support of the dominant imperialist bloc. This is the case in Spain today where the process of ‘democratization’ is being set in motion in liaison and agreement with the European and American bourgeoisie. Very often, however, there is a conflict between the state capitalist measures demanded by the deepening of the crisis and the increased subordination of the national capital to the interests of the bloc. Such conflicts can be the result either of a threat to the economic interests of the major power in the bloc, or of the fact that the political forces most qualified to serve the interests of the national capital defend international policies which do not conform to the interests of the bloc. For the same reason there may be a conflict between the needs of a national capital in its international policies and the nationalist mystifications which it tries to use against the proletariat.

12. As the crisis deepens, these contradictions tend to get sharper, to make the bourgeoisie's problems more inextricable. In trying to cope, the bourgeoisie does not have recourse to any long-term or even middle term plans. It proceeds blow by blow, from day to day, according to the needs of the moment. The empirical character of bourgeois politics is further accentuated by the fact that the bourgeoisie is incapable of developing a long-term view of its own historical perspectives. Certainly it has profited from past experiences and its political and academic advisers, its economists and its historians are always on hand to jog its memory and prevent it from making the same mistake twice: on the economic plane for example, it has understood the need to avoid another 1929; similarly, on the political plane, in 1945, it was able to take measures against the possibility of a post-war revolutionary wave like the one of 1917-23. However the bourgeoisie's use of its own experience never goes beyond learning how to make a few fixed responses to a situation that has already appeared before. Its own class prejudices prevent it from developing a real understanding of the laws of history; this lack of vision is further aggravated by the fact that today, the bourgeoisie is a reactionary class whose social system is in total decomposition and decadence. As the economic system gets out of control, it becomes harder and harder for the bourgeoisie to understand the complex and contradictory mechanisms which underlie the crisis.

Any understanding of the different policies which the bourgeoisie of this or that country is compelled to adopt at any given moment, any grasp of the relations of force between contending factions of the bourgeoisie, must therefore take into account the contradictory elements of the various problems which confront the ruling class, and the relative importance which these elements acquire in a given geographic, historic, economic and social context. It is particularly important to bear in mind that the bourgeoisie does not always act in its own best interests, either immediate or historical; very often the factions of the bourgeoisie most suited to deal with a situation only come to the fore after violent conflicts with their rivals.

13. It is in the under-developed countries that the bourgeoisie comes up against the most violent contradictions in its efforts to deal with the crisis. The measures taken by the ruling class are doomed to meet a total impasse at the economic level. These countries are unable to push the effects of the crisis elsewhere: on the contrary they are the main victims of this policy when it is used by the bourgeoisies of more developed countries. This economic impotence expresses itself on the political level in the form of chronic instability and brutal convulsions. Confrontation between different factions of the national capital cannot be resolved through the machinery of 'democracy', and often leads to armed conflict. These conflicts are particularly violent when they take place between the partisans of state capitalism - the need for which increases as the economy falls to pieces - and the most anachronistic factions of capital, who have a particular importance in countries with a low level of industrialization.

These confrontations between factions of national capital are usually amplified by the pressure of inter-imperialist rivalries, and in areas like Lebanon and Southern Africa today, they are entirely subordinated to the conflict between imperialisms.

For all these reasons, the under-developed countries are the main breeding ground for 'national liberation' struggles - especially when they happen to be situated in regions over which the great imperialist brigands are squabbling - and for military coups d'etat; the latter because the army is the only force in such societies which can guarantee a modicum of cohesion because it offers something which iscrucial to the struggle between factions of the ruling class in these countries: physical violence. Very often the army in the under-developed regions is the most resolute agent of state capitalism in contrast to the 'democratic' factions who are tied to private interests. The predominant role of confrontations between factions of the ruling class in these countries is further underlined by the fact that the working class, despite frequent violent reactions to ferocious levels of exploitation, is relatively weak, owing to the low level of industrialization.

14.It is in the countries with the greatest economic strength that the ruling class has the strongest grip over the problems thrown up by the crisis and therefore enjoys the highest level of political stability. This is connected to the fact that in these countries the different aspects of the bourgeoisie's response to the crisis do not lead to so many contradictions. Since the economic situation is less chaotic than elsewhere, the ruling class is not forced to take such extreme measures and still has a wide margin of political manoeuvre.

In concrete terms, this is expressed by the fact that the national capital is in a position to compete with its rivals on the economic and military front. This makes it less dependent on the imperialist blocs and more able to impose its own objectives on them. The strength of these capitals is further reinforced:

-- By the fact that the anachronistic sectors of production have a small numerical, economic and political influence in these countries;

-- By the ability of these countries to use the simple mystification of 'prosperity' against the working class.

This second aspect of the power of the bourgeoisie is particularly apparent in countries like the USA and West Germany where the ruling class has been able to mount an officially acknowledged attack on the living standards of the workers (a fall in real wages and massive increases in unemployment) without any major reaction from the proletariat, even though it is amongst the most powerful in the world. Moreover in countries of this kind, the general tendency towards state capitalism which the crisis accelerates does not take the form of violent conflicts as it does in the backward countries. Instead there is a gradual fusion between private and state capital.

In these conditions, the bourgeoisie retains a fairly wide margin of manoeuvre which tends to keep confrontations between ruling factions within certain limits (eg. the similarity between the programmes of Carter and Ford in the USA), and to absorb the repercussions of these confrontations (eg.the ease with which the American bourgeoisie survived and made use of the Watergate affair). The fact that moves, towards implementing the first and third aspects of the bourgeoisie's strategy does not lead to many contradictions at the moment can, even though these two are the most important historically, lead to a temporary pre-eminence of the contradictions created by the second aspect. In this way one can explain the defeat of the Social Democrats in Sweden and the SPD's losses in Germany.

But the SPD is being kept in power thanks to the co-operation of the liberals and this expresses the German bourgeoisie's need to retain a vehicle for carrying out state capitalist measures and mystifying the working class.

15. In countries which are developed but where capitalism is relatively weak, the contradictions engendered by the different aspects of the bourgeoisie's strategy are tending to find their own balance and to interact in a way that may appear paradoxical and precarious at first sight. This phenomenon is particularly clear when we look at the role of the Communist parties in certain European countries. These parties represent the faction of the bourgeois political apparatus which is best qualified both to take the state capitalist measures demanded by the situation and to make the working class accept the necessary sacrifices. This is why their participation in government is becoming more and more urgent. However, because of their international policies and the fear that they invoke in important sectors of the ruling class, the CP's accession to government office is being held up by a determined resistance from the American bloc, which is supported by the most backward sectors of society. In recent years, the CP's have been trying to prove to the rest of the bourgeoisie that they are loyal servants of the national capital, that they are independent from the USSR, and that they have every intention of respecting the rules of democracy; an intention which their rejection of the term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' clearly indicates. However, all these concessions have yet to overcome all opposition, even though the entry of the CP into government is extremely urgent in some of these countries. This again illustrates the fact that, shaken by its own internal contradictions both nationally and internationally, the bourgeoisie does not always grasp the right instrument at the right time. This is a significant, though temporary and unstable, characteristic of the situations and balance of forces which prevail today in a number of European countries, especially Portugal, Spain, Italy and France.

16. Of all the European countries, Portugal has in the last few years been the best illustration of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie. Portugal has the combined characteristics of both a 'backward' country - which explains the role played by the army - and a 'developed' country with a highly concentrated proletariat which became extremely combative around the end of 1973. These factors were at the root of the country's convulsions in 1974 and 1975. The first phase of these convulsions was a sharp move to the left, led by the established left, the left of the army and the extreme left. This expressed both the urgent necessity for state capitalist measures in a particularly catastrophic economic situation, and the need to derail and contain the working class. This phase was followed by a return to the right, which corresponded to a decline in the class struggle to an extremely strong resistance to state capitalism by sectors linked to small property, and to enormous political and economic pressure from the American bloc. The present orientation of Portuguese politics to the right (the abandoning of some aspects of agrarian reform, the return of Spinola, the liberation of PIDE - secret police agents) is an expression of a reflux in the class struggle and reinforces the demoralization of the class; at the same time the agents of these policies are poorly equipped to deal with a revival of class struggle, so the Portuguese situation is full of instability for the future.

17. Spain is one of the European countries destined to go through major convulsions in the next few years. The sharpness of the crisis, together with the senility and unpopularity of the old Franco regime, have made it extremely important that Spain should undergo a 'democratic' transformation. The death of Franco has set this process in motion. Such a change is all the more important for a bourgeoisie that has to deal with one of the most combative proletariats in the world: mere repression is becoming less and less effective as a means for containing the struggles of the Spanish working class. 'Democracy' is the only instrument Spanish capital can use to derail the combativity of the workers. And yet despite the urgency of this democratic transition, the whole process is being held up by the determined resistance of the most backward sectors of the ruling class based around the state bureaucracy, the army, and above all, the police. At the same time the Spanish bourgeoisie, like the rest of the Western bourgeoisie, is still extremely distrustful of the Spanish Communist Party, even though it is one of the staunchest advocates of 'Eurocommunism'. Alarmed by the Portuguese experience, the Spanish bourgeoisie wants to avoid a too rapid shift of power into the hands of the opposition, in case this might give too many advantages to the CP which is the main force in the opposition movement. Therefore, before any major changes take place, the bourgeoisie is trying to set up a strong centre party to defend the interests of the classical bourgeoisie and form a counter-weight to the CP.

The political crisis of the Spanish bourgeoisie is thus expressing itself in an extremely precarious balance between the vestiges of Francoism, the demands of the western bloc, and the strength of tile class struggle.

18. The situation of Italian capital is also characterized by the extreme precariousness of the political solutions it has resorted to up until now. Confronted with one of the most chaotic economic situations in Europe, the ruling political faction, the Christian Democracy, is incapable of taking the necessary measures to bring some degree of health to the economy and to strengthen the authority of the state. But although a growing element of the bourgeoisie recognizes the indispensability of the Italian Communist Party to the government, this solution is encountering fierce resistance today. In Portugal an alliance between the interests of the American bourgeoisie and those of backward sectors of the national economy opposed to further state capitalism pushed the CP from power. The same alliance is now keeping the Italian CP out of the government. At the moment the PCI is carrying out its responsibilities to Italian capital in an indirect manner. But its 'critical support' of the minority government of Andreotti can only be temporary. If it lasts too long it will bring considerable problems for capital in Italy.

This bastard solution has a dual inconvenience: it does not allow the adoption of energetic state capitalist measures, and it cannot be presented as a 'victory' for the workers in the way that direct PCI participation in government could. At the same time the unpopularity of austerity measures is to some extent directed at the PCI. In Italy as in Spain, capital is walking a tight-rope.

19. In France a long period of political stability is coming to an end. It is now following the path of other Latin countries hit by the crisis and is also on the verge of major political upheavals. The political forces which have been in power for nearly twenty years are becoming worn out, incapable of taking energetic measures to ameliorate the economic situation. As the parliamentary fracas about capital-gains tax showed, these forces are extremely dependent on the most backward sectors .of society, and they are only capable of mounting a relatively timid attack on the living standards of the working class. This is illustrated by the moderate character of the Barre plan. In these circumstances, the 'united left' is confidently putting itself forward as the most likely successor to the right after the legislative elections of 1978. The left will tend to move towards the centre of political life in France. It will also make use of the municipal elections of 1977 in order to induce an increasingly discontented working class to be patient and 'await the 'great victory' of a left government.

In the meantime, the right will have to improvise. However, although the situation in France is transitory - just as it is in Portugal, Spain and Italy - French capital has a greater structural strength and therefore a wider margin of manoeuvre and more effective means of holding its political problems at bay.

20. The precarious situation of British capital is not fundamentally different from that of other European countries we have looked at. But the point to emphasize about Britain is the paradoxical relationship between the depth of the economic crisis and the ability of the bourgeoisie to retain political control of the situation. If we bear in mind the three main aspects of the bourgeoisie's strategy, we can see that the British ruling class does not have much difficulty with the middle strata, in particular the peasantry, which is practically non-existent. At the same time British capital's main left faction, the Labour Party, enjoys the full confidence of the American bloc. Finally, the political strength of British capital is demonstrated by the way that the trade union apparatus from the TUC to the shop stewards has succeeded in maintaining control of one of the most militant proletariats in the world.

However, although the oldest bourgeoisie in the world has surprised everyone with the breadth of its resourcefulness, in the end all its 'savoir faire' will be rendered powerless by the continued decomposition of an economy which since 1967 has been one of the hardest hit by the world crisis.

21. The situation in the so-called 'socialist' countries is fundamentally no different from the situation in western Europe. The economic crisis is moving onto a political level because of the contradictions engendered by the divergences between national interests and the interests of the bloc; by the necessity to breathe some life into the productive apparatus; by the sullen but sometimes decisive resistance of sectors like the peasantry; and by the sporadic but violent reactions of the working class. In fact the fragility of these regimes, their economic weakness and their unpopularity, leave them with a much narrower margin of manoeuvre than the 'democratic' countries. In particular, the almost total statification of political life means thatthere are no political forces capable of channelling working class discontent into a 'democratic' dead-end a la Spain. The only political changes that can take place in these countries involve a modification of the ruling clique within the single party apparatus, and this places considerable limits on the mystifying effect of such window-dressing. Apart from the recuperation and institutionalization of organs of working class struggle, and the 'democratic' phraseology of certain forces which are doomed to remain in opposition, capital in these countries lacks any method for dealing with the working class excepting ferocious and systematic repression. The situation in Poland is a graphic illustration of all these points: Polish capital is extremely weak, and this means that its rigid political apparatus is subject to all kinds of convulsions which make it incapable of mounting an attack on the living standards of the peasantry and of an extremely combative working class.

22. China is a particularly significant example of the crisis of the 'socialist' countries. The development of its domestic and international policies confirms the analysis put forward for other countries.

To begin with, its rapprochement with the USA towards the end of the I960s has invalidated the theory that there is a 'state capitalist bloc' with a fundamental solidarity of interests against the 'private capitalist bloc'. This rapprochement also shows that it is impossible for any country, no matter how powerful, to be independent of the two great imperialist blocs which dominate the globe. The only 'national independence' is the ability to move from one bloc to another.

Secondly, the convulsions which have followed Mao’s death show the extreme instability of regimes of this kind. Once again we have seen confrontations between political forces more or less favourable to the Russian bloc or the American bloc, combined with conflicts within the state bureaucracy over various political and economic orientations. These conflicts have been settled in a violent and sometimes bloody manner by the different cliques that make up the state and the party.

Thirdly, the fact that Hua Kuo-Feng, former chief of police and now strongly supported by the army, has emerged as Head of State shows that open systematic repression is the main way of dealing with the working class in China. It also illustrates the fact that despite its particular characteristics, China does not escape the rule which gives the army a preponderant role in the internal politics of under-developed countries.

23. Although we can only understand the current political crisis of the bourgeoisie by taking into consideration all three major aspects of capital's response to the crisis, this doesn't mean that the three aspects have the same impact in the evolution of the crisis. We have already seen that certain of these aspects can, at a given moment and for largely circumstantial reasons, constitute the determining factors in a particular situation. But it is also true that on a historic level certain of these aspects will tend to play a more decisive role than others. We can thus say that the importance of problems arising from capital's attack on the middle strata will tend to give way to problems which are more directly linked to the fundamental interests of capital and which are at the heart of the historic alternative posed by the crisis: generalized class war or imperialist war. In the coming period we are going to see a growing concern with, on the one hand, the question of competition between national capitals, which will be expressed by the aggravation of inter-imperialist tensions and the internal strengthening of the blocs; and, on the other hand, with the question of the class struggle. And since it is the class struggle which will determine the survival of the system, the more the class struggle threatens the existence of capital the more it will come to the fore over the factor of inter-imperialist rivalries. History has shown, especially in 1918, that the only time the bourgeoisie is able to forget rivalry between nations is when its own life is at stake; and at such extreme times the bourgeoisie is perfectly capable of uniting against its common enemy, the proletariat.

Having outlined this general perspective, an examination of the political situation in most countries (with the exception perhaps of Spain and Poland) leads us to the conclusion that, over the past year, the factor of class struggle has to some extent given way to the other factors which determine the way the bourgeoisie runs its affairs.

Although in contrast to the 1930s the general perspective today is not imperialist war but class war, it must be said that the present situation is characterized by the large gap between the level of economic and political crisis and the level of class struggle. This gap is particularly striking when we look at a country which since 1969 has experienced a large number of social movements: Italy. The first effects of the crisis produced a powerful response from the working class, like the 'rampant May' of 1969. But today the massive assault on the working class which is the result of the country's political and economic disintegration has provoked a very limited response from the class, a response which in no way measures up to the previous levels of struggle. We are not just talking about a stagnation of class struggle, but an actual retreat by the proletariat. This applies both to the combativity of the class and to its level of consciousness, since today in Italy the trade union apparatus especially, which was previously brushed aside and denounced by an important number of workers, has regained a fairly effective control over the class.

24. Leaving aside the explanation for the present downturn in the class struggle, this phenomenon has delivered the coup de grace to all the theories which see the class struggle as the cause of the crisis. Whether they come from bourgeois economists - usually the most stupid and reactionary - or whether they hide behind a 'marxist' screen, such conceptions are today quite incapable of explaining how a reflux of class struggle can lead to such an intensification of economic crisis. The 'marxism' of the situationists, who saw May 1968 as the cause of economic difficulties which they only 'discovered' several years later, like the 'marxism' of a group like the GLAT ( Group de Liaison pour l'Action des Travailleurs) which spends its time accumulating vast stocks of statistics, is in dire need of a rest cure.

On the other hand, the present situation might appear to provide grist to the mill of those theories which hold that the crisis is the enemy of the class struggle and that the proletariat can only make its revolution against the system when it is functioning 'normally'. This idea, which bases its arguments on the way the class struggle developed after 1929, is one expression - when it's defended by revolutionaries - of the demoralization engendered by the terrible counter-revolution which has dominated one half of the twentieth century. It turns its back on the whole historical experience of the class and has always been opposed by marxists. If we look at the present situation in a static, immediatist manner, it might appear that the relative reflux of the class struggle is the result of the deepening crisis. But if we take into account all the characteristics of the proletarian movement, we can understand the real causes of this reflux and draw out the perspectives which arise from this situation. And of all the factors which determine the present situation three in particular must be borne in mind:

-- the characteristics of the historical development of revolutionary movements of the class;

-- the nature and rhythm of the current crisis;

-- the situation created by a half-century of counter-revolution.

25. For over a century revolutionaries have defended the idea that, in contrast to bourgeois revolutions which "storm quickly from success to success", proletarian revolutions "constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course … they seem to throw their opponent to the ground only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again before them, more colossal than ever …" (K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). The jagged course of the class struggle, which manifests itself both in the great historic cycles of flux and reflux and in fluctuations within these cycles, is connected to the fact that, in contrast to previous revolutionary classes, the working class has no economic base in society. Because its only source of strength is its consciousness and its capacity to organize which are constantly threatened by the pressure of bourgeois society, any mistake by the proletariat can mean not simply a standstill but a defeat which immediately plunges the class into demoralization and atomization.

This phenomenon is further accentuated as capitalism enters into its decadent epoch, when the working class no longer has any permanent organizations, such as the trade unions last century, to defend its interests as an exploited class. Today, as we emerge from the most terrible counter-revolution in the history of the working class, the jagged evolution of the class struggle is further accentuated by the profound break between the new generation of workers and the past experience of the proletariat. The working class today will have to endure a whole series of experiences over and over again before it will be able to draw the lessons of these experiences, renew the links with its own past, and integrate everything it has learnt into its future struggles.

The long road the class struggle must follow today is elongated further by the conditions in which the resurgence of class combativity is taking place: the slow development of an economic crisis of the system. Previous revolutionary movements of the proletariat all grew out of wars; this immediately forced the class to deal with the most violent convulsions that capitalist society can give rise to, and which very rapidly confronted the proletariat with political problems, above all the problems of seizing power. In the present circumstances, the development of an awareness of the total bankruptcy of the system - especially where the proletariat is most concentrated, ie in the most developed countries - is necessarily a slow process which has to follow the rhythm of the crisis itself. This allows all kinds of illusions to linger for quite some time about the possibility of the system overcoming the crisis by simply changing the bourgeois team in power and applying a few choice formulae.

26. This who l e situation has allowed capital to recoup some of the ground it lost at the beginning of the crisis when the sudden initial reaction of the proletariat came as quite a surprise to the ruling class. In particular, the left factions of capital and their trade union machinery have managed to systematically sabotage the struggles of the class: when they are in power by brandishing the threat of the return of the 'right', of the 'reactionaries or even more frequently, by presenting state capitalist measures as a way of overcoming the crisis and of defending the interests of the proletariat. The 'extreme left' has played an important part in all this with its policy of 'critical support' which serves to steer elements of the class who are beginning to break with the established left back into the electoral and trade union fold.

The idea of waiting for the victory of the left has gained ground in the working class because of the disappointment engendered by a series of defeats on the level of economic struggles. Feeling the need for some kind of 'politicization' of its struggles, but lacking sufficient experience, the class has been led onto the terrain of bourgeois politicization. This disappointment has also bred a certain fatalism in the working class; the workers will not tend to react again until the crisis has deepened in a really violent manner.

27. All these factors allow us to understand the present mood of the proletariat and the relative decline of its struggles. But because the crisis can only get worse, and because, in contrast to 1929, the working class today is an undefeated class, the conditions which for the moment have allowed the ruling class to regain control of the proletariat will tend to disappear.

As the crisis deepens and the living conditions of the proletariat get worse and worse the class will be forced to respond no matter what mystifications are obscuring its consciousness today. In places where the left and its leftist pimps are already in power this response will tend to unmask their real nature quite quickly. In places where the left is not yet in office, its accession to state power will probably allow it to keep things ticking over for a little while longer. But at the same time this will give rise to the conditions which will enable the proletariat to understand that its struggles can only lead in one direction: direct confrontation with the capitalist state.

Finally, as an accumulation of experience allows the class to draw the lessons from its struggle, the demoralization and the mystification that it is going through today will be transformed into positive factors in the development of combativity and class consciousness. At the moment, the mystifying manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie are still bearing fruit and the role of revolutionaries is to carry on denouncing them with the utmost energy, especially those mystifications promulgated by the 'extreme left'. But this very gap between the level of the crisis and the level of the class struggle means that important upsurges of the class are on the agenda, and these upsurges will tend to narrow the gap.

The relative calm in the class at a time when the crisis is getting worse and worse (particularly the period 1974-5) and seems to have stunned the class to some extent, should not be seen as an inversion of the general tendency for the class struggle to follow the ascendant course it began in the late sixties. The calm today is simply the calm before the storm. After its initial battles at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies the working class is often in an unconscious manner preparing and concentrating its forces for a second round. Revolutionaries must also prepare themselves for this second round so that it doesn't take them by surprise and so that they can fully carry out their tasks in the coming struggles.

November 1976

The Acceleration of the Economic Crisis

"It seems that this time, happily, the danger will be avoided. The recovery has taken on afresh and has become general during the first quarter of 1976; unemployment which had reached one of the highest levels since the war, has started to fall in some countries." (OECD, Economic Perspectives, June 1976)

These optimistic predictions of the OECD would be swept away just a few months later. For the first time since the recession of 1974-5 the stock exchanges in New York, London and Paris experienced their lowest trade-figures. Confirming the profound scepticism of the bourgeoisie as to the depth of the 'recovery', the Paris stock exchange experienced its 'black Thursday' on 12 October with an average 3 per cent fall in one day of all its shares. On the very same day, Spain, Portugal and Italy took the most draconian measures in their histories: interest rates were raised; wage and price freezes introduced; and a series of protectionist measures against imports brought in. Actually Paris had already preceded them on this path (though not with the same severity) with the ‘Barre Plan'. Simultaneously, in the same month, the franc, pound and lira continued their slow descent to hell. On 5 October Le Monde could laconically conclude that the "recovery was drawing to a close".

THE FINALE OF THE 'RECOVERY'

Before examining the phenomena and nature of the 'recovery' we must first of all recall the state of the world economy in 1975. According to the Bangue de Reglements Internationaux world trade for that year expanded by 33 billion dollars, an eighth of the figure for 1974; the most significant contraction in world trade since World War II.

This paralysis in trade, the expression of an over-developed productive apparatus acting on a world market saturated with unrealizable commodities, was concretized in a 10 per cent decline in the volume of international trade.

In August 1975 the decline in industrial production taken over a year was the following: the USA by 12.5%, Japan by 14%, West Germany by 12%, France by 9%, Great Britain by 6% and Italy by 12.2%. As a corollary to this, the indices for world trade in metals went from 245.8 in May 1974 to 111.5 in May 1975, (using 100 as the base in 1970). That classic expression of the insoluble contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces, unemployment, had reached a record total of 23 million unemployed in the OECD countries by the middle of 1975.

THE PHENOMENA OF THE ‘RECOVERY’

The reason for the 'recovery' - beginning in the last quarter of 1975 - was essentially the purely conjunctural movement of stock-building that had taken place during 1975. This artificial aspect of the ‘recovery' was emphasized by the fact that "the build-up of stocks this year will undoubtedly have contributed about 1.75 per cent to the expansion of production in real terms, although this played a negligible role during the recoveries of 1969 and 1972." (OECD, Economic Perspectives)

What are the results of this 'technical operation'? According to the OECD Ministers who met last June in Paris:

"The rapid expansion experienced by the USA since mid-1975 provided a strong impetus to the recovery in other countries, notably Japan. The level of industrial production in the OECD zone is now approaching the highest achieved in the last months of 1973. The level of unemployment which had reached some 5.5 per cent of the active population towards the end of 1975 has now fallen to about 5 per cent of the active population, a fall which essentially reflects the improved situation of the USA. In Japan and in Europe part-time working has clearly receded, but the number of unemployed remains high.”

Once again these optimistic predictions would be contradicted by reality only a month later:

“The deviation already observed in May and June is now being transformed into a slowing-down and we could even see a sudden drop in economic activity. The rates of industrial growth for France and Germany are falling far more than could have been predicted some months ago; 5 per cent growth per annum is small for a growth economy which should normally be around 7 or 8 per cent. In Italy, where the recovery is most recent, the rate of growth is also falling, although it still remains quite high (18 per cent). Let’s not discuss Great Britain where the ending of the recovery followed on almost immediately after the first serious effort to get the economy moving.”

As for the two big economic giants, the USA and Japan, they too have experienced the same process of declining growth since the third quarter of 1976 - although less marked because of their economic strengths.

“In Japan the recession hit later but was devastating: the rate of growth has fallen from almost 30% in April to no more than 9% in June-July to hardly 2% in November. Only the rate of industrial growth in the USA shows a different pattern, less abrupt and more reassuring: after a pinnacle of 18% in September-October 1975 the growth rate fell to 6% in the beginning of 1976, to stabilize at 7% in June-July.” (Le Monde, 5 October 1976)

As for the fall in unemployment, presented as the great victory of the ‘recovery’, this was essentially due to the fact that the USA added 1.8 million to its labour force from the beginning of 1976.1In Europe, on the contrary, not only has the number of unemployed remained exactly the same in France, Italy and even West Germany, but in Great Britain the number has grown to the record figure of 6.4 per cent of the active population.

It is this extremely ‘moderate’ nature of the ‘recovcry’ which explains the fall-back in the inflation of wholesale prices and raw material prices (but not retail prices which always rise): thus, as in 1975, a movement started from July-August to lower metal prices in order to counteract the falling sales in metals, particularly from Japan. The fall-back in inflation, which the economists of capital have taken to be a sign of 'recovery', actually expresses a relapse into the crisis.

MECHANISMS OF THE 'RECOVERY’

Unlike the ‘recoveries’ following the recessions of 1967-8 and 1971 the 'recovery' in the first quarter of 1976 was of a sectoral and non-generalized nature. The boost to production was far from being the result of a rise in investment in fixed capital (as had been the case with the preceding ‘recoveries’ through a policy of hyper-inflation); this ‘recovery’ was above all the result of purchases in durable goods (cars, electrical gadgets, etc) in addition to public service expenditure (social security, public works, housing etc). In fact the ‘recovery’ was quite simply a matter of 'depreciation’ costs (wear and tear of durable goods and public facilities). As the OECD asserted on the subject in France:

“Demand emanating from the public sector and private consumption were the motive force behind this recovery. Later they were replaced by foreign demand and a new restocking cycle. The extremely brisk increase in demand for household goods was stimulated by last autumn's reflationary measures and essentially meant a catching-up on the purchase of durable goods which had been deferred since 1974.”

Today, whatever Professor Duhring's descendants in the shape of the left and leftists may claim to the contrary, the idea that consumption can be a boost to production is more than ever an utter lie. This is so not only because the very survival of capital implies a more rapid growth in Sector I (production goods) than in Sector II (consumption goods), but also because growth in Sector I implies the necessary relative or absolute decline in Sector II, this being the contradiction which lies at the very heart of the capitalist system. In fact there can only ever be a rise in oonsumption when it is based on a massive and lasting growth in production which corresponds to the existence of solvent markets. And today the crises of decadent capitalism are accompanied not only by a relative decline in consumption but also by an absolute decline. Today when millions of workers are being thrown out of production and the mass of the proletariat is subject to an ever-increasing decline in its wages, both nominal and real, this analysis is proved more than ever to be correct.

This is why the apparent demand for consumer goods was really an attempt to keep ahead of the wear and tear on consumer goods necessary for the upkeep of the labour force.

Moreover, we can observe the complete inability of capitalism to maintain any level of consumption,except for a more and more restricted sector of the population, in the fact that this so-called policy of 'stimulation' of the economy has not only not stopped the decline in production for all capitalist countries, but has been accompanied by a real worsening in inflation through a policy of growing debts and budgetary deficits. Thus the increase in the volume of trade in the first quarter of 1976 has brought with it a speed-up in the current deficits of the OECD which have risen from 6 billion dollars in 1975 to some 20 billion dollars (annual rate) during the first quarter of 1976.

Faced with the growing pessimism of the bourgeoisie, governments have implemented all kinds of measures to encourage investments in production: from tax credits to subsidies for investments, to a quicker redemption of debts. Thus at the end of 1975 the French government granted fiscal reductions to companies on 10percent of the value of orders for capital goods carried out between 1 May 1975 and 7 January 1976. When governments are in a state of semi-bankruptcy financially they make urgent appeals for foreign loans: a loan of 1 billion dollars to Italy from the OECD and also to Great Britain and Portugal where the central banks have been propping up these flagging economies. But, as The Economist recently noted: "The bankers are worried now about the fate of these loans, but they have allowed trade to continue." (our emphasis) It could not have been stated clearer: survival by credit, or the sudden death of the system!2

Through this growth in budgetary deficits and foreign debts we see the ever-increasing role of state intervention in the economy. This is the real motive force behind the 'boom' when a real boom in markets is missing, for markets have continued to stagnate and even to decrease (the share in the world market of the seven largest OECD countries further declined in 1976, the only exceptions to this tendency being West Germany and Japan). Faced with this state of affairs governments have implemented a system to encourage exports by subsidies and lessening taxes on profits. This policy has encouraged exporting countries like West Germany and Japan to significantly increase their share of exports in world trade.

THE BREVITY OF THE 'RECOVERIES'

One of the most convincing indications of the permanent character of the general crisis of the system since 1967 is that the length of the phases of 'recovery' have become shorter. The crisis of 1967-8 was followed by a two-year 'recovery'; the 'recovery' in 1971 only lasted a year and a half.The 1976 'recovery' lasted scarcely more than six months. On the other hand the phases of recession have lengthened: one year in 1967 and 1971 and almost two years in 1974-5. Thus the phases of 'recovery' become shorter and shorter to the point that they become non-existent, while the phases of recession become longer and longer, tending to become permanent.

We can thus clearly see the futility of 'marxist' explanations (like the one in Programme Communiste, no.67) which describe cycles of growth and recession in capitalist decadence. These cycles had a real existence in the nineteenth century when recessions opened up the wayto an enlarged expansion onto the world market. But they can have no real existence when capitalism is in decline.

While capitalism was still an ascendant mode of production and was still developing its modern form of industrial capital, the development of economic cycles was a manifestation of the organic growth of the system. The cycles of expansion and recession were therefore expressing in a material waythe contradictory development of a system coming up against the limitations of national markets when its mode of existence was already set within a global framework. Capital was not yet limited by the completion of the conquest of the world market and experienced crises which essentially were onesof adaptation, when the growth in production tended to be more rapid than that of the market, or when the incessant technical revolution imposed an ever more rapid transferring of capital to new branches of production. The crises therefore acted as spurs to new and greater cycles of production on the level of the world market. The reason for these periodic phases of recession and stagnation, as regular as the tides and generally short, came to lay less and less in the burden of agricultural or climatic conditions (for example the crisis of 1847) as in the temporary weakness of that universal aspect in the world-wide growth of production: capital in its money or credit form. The long phases of depression (long in relative terms) such as the one from 1873-96 found their origins in the appearance of more modern capitals (Germany and the USA) who started to compete with the old capitalist countries (Great Britain, France) and were therefore of a more local than international nature. It was then a question of different levels of development in the general period of international expansion of the system. As for the crises which burst out at the peak of these cycles, they became less and less frequent but more severe (1873) in relation to the colossal expansion of the system itself.

What were natural cycles in the life of a developing system are today nothing but convulsions, spasms of a declining system which occur with greater frequency and with shorter and shorter intervals in between. Only the mechanisms applied by the bourgeoisie since 1929 have to some extent attenuated the violent growth of these convulsions - although these mechanisms are becoming weaker and weaker like a brake will with overuse. To imagine in spite of all this that the bourgeoisie is able to launch 'recoveries' and booms at will before falling once more into a new crisis, is to believe that the bourgeoisie is able to overcome its mortal contradictions indefinitely:

"The global cycle we have observed from 1971 to 1975 has an average duration of four to five years ….. Within this hypothesis the slow recovery in the beginning must speed up towards 1977 because of the simultaneity of forces at play in the economic cycle and the interdependence of economies; this recovery would have to be as vigorous as the fall was deep and should take place towards 1978 with a new productive boom." (Programme Communiste, no. 67)

The transparency of the 'recovery' in today's crisis and the bankruptcy into which the whole of Europe is slowly sinking in the wake of the Third World countries, will soon sweep away such pseudo-dialectical mumbo-jumbo about the 'natural' cycles of capitalism in decadence.3

THE 'RECOVERY' IS UNEQUAL

Recessions in the period of reconstruction during the fifties were of a purely conjunctural origin (due to the inequality of reconstruction according to country, the weight of colonial wars etc) which is also why the recovery was general and continued on such a regular and strong path.

Since 1967, the beginning of the phase of the general crisis of capitalism, the very opposite has taken place. Recession has become the rule and recovery the exception.In general, the 'recovery' on a world scale has only affected the most powerful economies, essentially the dominant imperialisms who can throw off the effects of the crisis onto their zone of influence, like the USA and Russia who temporarily benefited from the 'recovery' by strengthening their hold over their own bloc. In reality only three countries experienced a real recovery in production and foreign trade: the USA, West Germany and above all Japan. The famous 'recovery' in fact saw the fall of the three larger capitalist powers: Italy, Great Britain and France.

At the end of the day, only the USA with its greater economic strength has been able to withstand the increasing competition posed by West Germany and Japan. It has achieved this by floating the dollar and taking a series of protectionist measures, while at the same time exerting political pressure on its allies. The weakness of Japan and West Germany, whose production depends on keeping up and even increasing exports, is clear to see; and in the USA industrial production has already declined in the third quarter of 1976 and unemployment has reappeared. Thus we can see that movements of 'recovery' that were both local and international in 1969-70 and 1972-3 have now become unequal and purely local. We can also say that as these periods of 'recovery' become purely local expressions and then increasimgly appear in only two or three nation, they also take on a negative character: the 'recovery' in production is simply a relative slowing down in the fall in production as compared to the previous period of 'recession'. At the same time the precondition for this local 'recovery' is the acceleration in the decomposition of theweakest competing economies. And within this general decomposition, what the bourgeoisie calls 'recovery' is no more than a greater capacity to put a brake on the free fall of the economy on the part of the economically strongest countries, and no longer corresponds to a rise in industrial production and world trade. In this new mortal crisis of world capitalism there can no longer be an alternation of economic cycles as in the ascendant phase: there is only one cycle, that of the permanent crisis which leads either to war or revolution.

Let us examine in more detail some of the measures which capital has tried to take in both the national and international spheres in order to halt the rapid decomposition of the economy.

THE SOLUTIONS OF THE BOURGEOISIE:

Export More

From the East to the West it is heralded as the miracle solution. This is the solution which presents itself particularly to the weaker capitals on account of their own second-rate home market. For example, in Poland, exports were increased by 30 percent in 1975 acting as the key to the maintenance of the GNP. For all the Eastern bloc countries exports to the OECD zone have increased from 22 per cent to 30 per cent in 1975. The same thing applies to Italy and Great Britain where successive devaluations allowed them to increase the volume and value of their exports.

Despite the massive aid pumped into exporting companies by the different countries a much smaller number of countries have enjoyed the few months of 'recovery' than in 1972; Essentially these were countrles where the productivity of labour has been noticeably raised or was maintained at a former level, while the real wages of the workers have diminished. This is particularly true in the three major powers in world trade: Japan, West Germany and the USA. This can be proved by looking at the development of unit-costs of manpower in manufacturing industries:

% INCREASE IN LABOUR COSTS

1973-74

1974-75

1975-76

Germany (all industry)

+11.6

+7.5

+2.0

USA

+9.5

+11.0

+4.5

Japan

+28.7

+22.5

+6.0

France

+13.5

+16.0

+9.0

Italy

+20.5

+25.0

+17.0

Figures from the OECD Economic Perspectives, 1976

It is thanks to its greater competivity that Japanese capital has been able to improve its position to the detriment of the USA by becoming the main exporter of steel and by solidly implanting itself in Latin America and Europe in the automobile and electronic fields. To a lesser extent it has done this in the USA and West Germany as well. However, the fact that Japan's hold over such crucial capital exports is at the expense of other capitals, means that the latter can less and less be used as outlet for Japan's goods, so that overall there is in fact a decrease in markets.

The first contradiction of this 'solution' for capital can be observed in the current massive export of capital. Foreign investment has increased to a previously unknown proportion; for example, West Germany and Japan have increased theirs seven times since 1967. What people refer to as the 'multinationals' having increasing investments outside their country of origin really expresses the need of capital to reduce its costs of production by lessening the share of variable capital included in the price of a commodity. The places for investment can only be those where the average cost of labour is below the average in developed countries and where the production of commodities is necessarily a simple process. The installation of production units discharging commodities onto a world market at lower prices can only reinforce the very competition it is trying to overcome: according to the Far Eastern Review (15.10.76) the implantation of Japanese electronic factories in Singapore and South Korea brought with it an increased competition on the Japanese home market for cameras and transistor radios. The same thing has happened in the largest capitalist power, the USA. Because of the lowering costs of labour power in the USA over the last three years4 European and Japanese multinationals have already taken one quarter of American exports with investments costs at half those in 1970. (Mentioned in Neue Zurcher Zeitung. 29 June 1976.)

This pursuit of lower investment costs on the world market is accompanied by a fall in investment in the larger industrial countries.

This brings us to the second contradiction, (a corollary to the first) which increasingly affects the industrialized countries, and that is the need to continue investing productively in their own national capital in order to maintain the minimum of modernization in machinery, a prerequisite for the maintenance of competivity in export commodities. But budgetary restrictions and a massive reduction in profits for capital bring with them a growing reduction in productive investments and technical research in proportion to decreasing markets:

"The weak inclination to invest, apparent in the USA for some years, has now resulted in the phenomenon of a much more rapid ageing in machinery than in Japan or West Germany. While in West Germany in 1975 less than 50 per cent of industrial machinery was eleven years old or more, in the USA the proportion was 85 per cent; in the most important sectors such as steel, paper and cars, there is no longer any trace of innovation." (Der Spiegel, 29 March 1976)

What is already true for the USA (and even more so for Britain) can only be repeated on a larger scale in the weaker countries. Countries like Russia or Poland which, in spite of their accumulation problems, or rather because of them, attempt to modernize their productive apparatus with investments obtained through systematic overseas borrowing, can in the long run only burden their commodities with the heavy weight of these foreign debts. Without a foothold in the world market they will only accelerate their bankruptcy and also the bankruptcy of the lending countries who will be unable to recover their loans.

This is why the only possihle investments for the capitalists are those that they cynically call 'rationalizations'. Further on we will look at how these 'rationnlizations' really mean more unemployment and increasing exploitation for the working class.

Thus, what the bourgeoisie is pleased to call the 'scarcity of capital' really only expresses the growing powerlessness of capital, both East and West, to find new outlets for its commodities. To develop the productive apparatus in order to realize an ever shrinking volume of capital becomes increasingly absurd even within the framework of this system. Today only the most developed capitals are able in any way to break the fall in their investments and keep production at previous levels; and this can only be at the expense of destroying weaker capitals, which leads to a further contraction of solvent markets.

The Return of Protectionist Measures

The end of the Irecoveryl once more puts on the agenda the time-honoured recipes of the bourgeoisie in crisis. Because of the generalized bankruptcy expressed in the negative balance of payments of the Eastern countries, Third World countries and the OECD countries (apart from West Germany and Japan for the time being), each country is trying to protect its own home market from competition by restricting import commodities.

Over recent months the free circulation of products within the EEC was a reality. However, France recently decided to put a price freeze on importers' goods until 31December in order to fight against German competition. Since last spring, Italy has put a 50 percent surcharge on imports. In order to fight against Japanese competition Great Britain started talking about imposing supplementary quotas. In general, all the anti-inflation plans adopted in Europe over the last few months will have the effect of restraining foreign trade. The EEC believes that trade within the community will decrease in value from 13percent to 10 percent in a year.

In the Eastern bloc countries the same tendency is apparent. In Hungary, for example, the five-year plan predicted a decline in imports as much from within COMECON as from the OECD, the figures given being respectively: from 9.9% a year to 6.5% and from 8.3% to 6.5% (Courrier des Pays de l'Est, May 1976).

In the USA, that haven of 'free trade', the government decided in June to impose quotas on steel imports (specialized steel and stainless steel). This recent imposition of quotas in steel imports reveals the same tendency to return to a sort of autarky as did the numerous inquiries into Japanese dumping of televisions, cars and shoes.

Nevertheless, such extreme measures can only be taken within very well-defined limits owing to:

– the greater international division of labour and interpenetration or rather inter-dependence of the largest capitals than in the past;

– the strengthening of blocs which demands a minimum level of economic stability. The bankruptcy of a given country under the blows of too-vicious protectionist measures can only lead to the bankruptcy of other economies in a chain reaction;

– the lessons which the bourgeoisie has learnt following the 1929 crisis about the catastrophic effect of a brutal return to autarky by national capitals;

– the development of the class struggle since 1968, which imposes a certain prudence on the bourgeoisie about limiting essential consumer imports (for example, the lesson which the Polish bourgeoisie learnt from the workers' riots in 1970).

In the coming period, therefore, we can predict that we will see protectionist measures being accompanied by hagglings over export quotas and 'mutual compensations'.5However, the gradual limitations on trade can only postpone the inevitable crash of the world economy, and ensure that it will take place on a much more extensive scale. At the same time, the massive 'aid' granted to the weaker economies by the central banks, by unleashing new waves of hyper-inflation, risks unleashing at some time or other a generalized financial bankruptcy; this is because the permanence of the crisis will produce movements of more and more uncontrollable panic within the bourgeoisie.

State Capitalism and Austerity Measures

All the measures to 'boost' the economy taken by the different national states demonstrate the growing importance of the statels role in favorizing exports and restricting imports on the home market and expresses the tendency for the whole economy to be taken over by the state apparatus, the ultimate crutch of this declining system.

The tendency towards state capitalism, which has resulted in total control of the economy in the Eastern bloc and most Third World countries (eg Peru, Algeria, China etc) also exists in all countries where capitalism is in a state of debilitation and endemic stagnatlon; and recently the tendency has considerably increased in countries where the economy is in an adverse position vis-a-vis the world market. The coming to power of the left in Europe, in order to take the nationalization measures necessary to obtain a centralized control over the economy, will appear more and more inevitable in the months to come. The repeated cropping up of 'scandals' in all the Western countries could perhaps be interpreted as signs of the increasingly intense pressures being exerted by a growing faction of the bourgeoisie on the most backward or developed sectors of capital, in order to get them to submit to the necessity for an increasingly energetic state control of the most important capitalist firms.

Where capital has traditionally been the most powerful (Japan and the USA) this tendency to state capitalism is essentially expressed by an increasingly rapid rate of capital concentration, encouraged for the most part by means of a variety of state 'aids', Just between January and April 1976 the number of fusions rose to 264, 40 percent more than during the same period in 1975. What's more, in the USA there is a growing faction of the capitalist class which has no hesitation in envisaging a planned economy as a very real possibility. In April 1976, the President of the Ways and Means Commission of the House of Representatives had to announce that:

"The expression 'planned economy' is considered in some circles to be like a red flag used against private enterprise and evokes the image of soviet commissars; it would be absurd for a government to plan the complex system of supply and demand down to the very last detail, but it would be even more absurd to claim that the government has no responsibility about having some foresight and taking intelligent measures in order to avoid dangers or even disaster." (Cited by Hiscox in 'Analysis of the Crisis in the USA', Critique of Political Economy, nos.24-25.)

But even in the state capitalist countries this tendency is accelerated by putting into operation plans (like the ones in Russia) which envisage the liquidation of the small peasant property-holder and the reorganization of land into agrico-industrial complexes. This is now a necessity after the recent succession of agricultural disasters. Thus the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party issued a decree on 2 June 1976 concerning the "development of specialization and agricultural concentration on the basis of inter-company co-operation and agrico-industrial integration." Such statements quite clearly point out their main preoccupations, (quoted from Courrier des Pays de l'Est, July-August 1976). In addition there has been over the last few years a particularly accelerated fusion of capital by horizontal and vertical concentrations: these measures have made the fusion of capital with the state more direct, and in 1976 have led to the development of industrial units regrouping formerly autonomous companies (their number has now reached 2300 according to Kosygin's speech at the Twenty Fifth Congress of the Russian CP).

These measures to 'rationalize' the economy in face of the crisis are accompanied by unprecedented austerity measures which tend towards 'cheapening' accumulation for a state severely paralyzed by budgetary deficits of dizzying proportions. In 1975, as a result of the 'stimulation' measures following the recession, the budgetary deficits reached unprecedented heights: 70 billion dollars for the USA; 35 billion for West Germany; 10 billion dollars for Japan, etc.

With the end of the 'recovery' the OECD warned and advised its members to reduce their budgetary deficits; according to the OECD they should be reduced from 1977 onwards. These reductions would come primarily from cuts in 'services' (social security in particular, whose costs have risen everywhere) which constitute a part of workers' wages. In New York the 'rationalization' measures in municipal services balanced the books by getting rid of 36,000 jobs, while other big cities decided on massive lay-offs, increased taxes, and a draconian reduction in social aid. Similarly, from France to Italy and Poland the governments have taken measures to freeze wages and introduce tax increases; and in Poland the government decided, as a matter of course, to levy some part of savings bank deposits in order to subsidize house-building.

GROWING PAUPERIZATION OF THE PROLETARIAT

In recent years we have seen a considerable growth in the rate of exploitation of the proletariat through a vicious increase in productivity for those workers still employed. This increase in the rate of exploitation through the extraction of relative surplus value is supplemented by absolute exploitation through enforced overtime.

The relative pauperization of the proletariat which is a permanent feature of the capitalist system, is now joined by the growth of absolute pauperization. In the past this was denied by the reformists when the cyclical crises crashed down on the vast majority of the proletariat, and today it is denied by the left of capital when the crisis has become permanent and has ended up affecting the entire class. Limited during the period of reconstruction to Third World and East European countrics, the tendency towards pauperization is now affecting the immense majority of the world proletariat through:

– the constant unemployment which now affects 20 million workers in the OECD countries and at least 20 percent of the active population in Third World countries; in East European countries where it is not officially recognized, it is often hidden by the existence of labour camps, (according to Contemporary Poland, September 1971, there were 600,000 unemployed before the 1970 events). More and more this immense mass of unemployed is being pushed towards the threshold of physical poverty as governments cut down their already paltry benefits to the unemployed. While this threshold of physical poverty varies quantitatively according to each country (depending on the historic rates of pay of the different working classes), qualitatively speaking (as the OECD inquiries into 'poverty' have demonstrated) the whole capitalist world is moving towards the poverty-line,and in some cases has already crossed over it.6

– the cutting of real wages, which is expressed both by the cutting of benefits (family allowances, social security etc) and by the decrease of buying power which is being attacked with increasing severity by galloping inflation. The official statistics from the Department of Trade reveal that the average real wage of wage-earners has fallen by more than 10 percent between 1972 and 1975, even in the USA. Judging from the official statistics from Ministries of Labour and employers, it seems that in one year from 1974-5 real wages fell on average more than 6 percent in France, Japan and Great Britain. This fall can be more or less sharp in the different countries affected by the crisis depending on how fiercely the workers resist the massive attacks of capital; in Poland, for example, the workers had just peen subjected to massive reductions in their real wages when the insurrection of 1970 forced the Polish government to become massively indebted to the USA and Russia in order to dampen the powder-keg of class struggle with a nominal 40 percent raise in wages to be spread over five years (Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1976). This to a large extent explains the bankruptcy of Polish capital, which sees today that 'to produce more' means to 'consume less'.

The living conditions of the working class were only made worse by the 'recovery', which was accompanied by wage freezes and an inflation which became more violent when 'boom' techniques were set in motion. The complete lie of a 'recovery' is exposed by this more than anything else.

The return of absolute pauperization, believed to be definitively banished from 'industrial societies', confirms the analysis Rosa Luxemburg made almost seventy years ago:

“The lowest, most reprobate and miserable layers which are rarely or never employed are not the rubbish which the bourgeoisie describes as the 'good for nothings' of 'official society'; these layers are intimately linked to the best placed upper layers of industrial workers down through all the intermediary members ofthe reserve army. The existence of the lowest layers of the proletariat is determined by the same laws of capitalist production that swell or reduce its numbers; and so the proletariat forms an organic whole, a social class whose degrees of misery and oppression allow it to grasp the capitalist law of wages in its totality, and that includes farm labourers and the reserve army of unemployed with all its different strata, from the highest to the lowest.” (Rosa Luxemburg, Introduction to Political Economy) (our translation)

Thus the pauperization of the class does not mean its defeat or atomization; absolute pauperization far from expressing the organic decomposition of the exploited class, as was the case in the periods of decline in the slave and feudal systems, is the organic affirmation of a whole class, an historic class forced to affirm itself through revolution, or to disappear through the war that will signify the general destruction of humanity.

PERSPECTIVES

In the report brought out after the meeting of the principal OECD members in June 1976, the world bourgeoisie imagined 'scenarios' of growth (the bourgeoisie no longer speaks of forecasts, given the growing bankruptcy of state capitalism). It considers:

– that growth until 1980 must be moderate (not more than 5 per cent per annum) in order to avoid a new wave of inflation which could make the international monetary and financial system sink into bankruptcy after too strong a 'recovery'. Thus the bourgeoisie, which once developed the productive forces in a historically progressive manner, and puffed itself up with the pride of a conquering class, today acknowledges that the condition for its survival now rests upon "containing the risks of an excessive growth in profitslt and avoiding “the risk involved in an under-estimation of the strength of expansionist forces", (OECD, June 1976);

– that “growth between 1975 and 1980 can only happen if wage rises are prevented from reaching a level which would compromise productivity and discourage investment.” Said another way, the slowing-down in decline now depends on whether the bourgeoisie can limit the class struggle. The bourgeoisie is beginning to understand that the survival of its system now lies in the hands of the proletarian class.

Nevertheless, today's crisis is still developing slowly. Unlike in 1929 the crash in the economy doesn't spread from the most powerful nations to the weakest (from the USA to Germany from 1929 to 1932) but rather from the least developed centres (Italy, Great Britain and France) to the heartlands of capitalism (USA, Japan, Russia) because of a slow process whereby the fall of the weak economies is momentarily accompanied by the relative strengthening of their strongest rivals. In view of the gradual disappearance of the phases of 'recovery' and the support world capital has given to its bankrupt partners by an increasing resort to fictitious capital, the bourgeoisie has to resist the temptations to panic which are more and more appearing in its midst (despite all the international organs which it has set up since 1945 to assure some kind of cohesion among the various national capitals). Otherwise the threat of generalized bankruptcy will present itself to a terrified bourgeoisie.

These then are the two factors - class struggle and the growing panic of the bourgeoisie - which together determine the survival of the system.

The State and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Presentation on the Period of Transition

In the ICC Platform adopted at the First Congress of the ICC in January 1976, the question of the relationship between the proletariat and the state in the period of transition remained “open”:

“The experience of the Russian Revolution has shown the complexity and seriousness of the problem of the relationship between the class and the state in the period of transition. In the coming period, the proletariat and revolutionaries cannot evade this problem, but must make every effort to resolve it." (The Platform of the ICC, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (Point 15), in International Review no.5.)

It is in the context of this effort that the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale has approached the question and tried to formulate a resolution which sums up the point reached by the discussion so far.

But the question which has been raised is of a programmatic character. Since the ICC Platform is the only programmatic basis for all sections of the Current, it goes without saying that only the general Congress of the ICC has the competence to decide about any possible changes in the Platform.

Thus by taking up a position on the resolution on the period of transition, the Second Congress of RI will not be altering the programmatic basis of RI; just like any other section of the ICC, RI does not have a distinct programmatic basis from the Current as a whole.

THE LIMITS OF THE DISCUSSION

Before going into the complex problems of the period of transition, it would be useful to distinguish three main areas of discussion:

– The general specificities which characterize the period of transition from capitalism to communism and which distinguish it from other historical periods of transition.

– The relationship between the revolutionary class and the rest of society during the period of transition; in other words the problem of what is meant by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and, consequently, what must be the relationship between the revolutionary class and the state during the transition period.

– Questions about all the concrete 'economic' measures for the transformation of social production.

Revolutionaries must try to give an answer to all those problems. However, ever since Marx and Engels first laid down the bases of 'scientific materialism', revolutionaries have been aware that they must be conscious of the tremendous limitations imposed by the very limitations of proletarian experience in this area. Otherwise they risk losing themselves in the kind of speculations which Marx dismissed contemptuously as "recipes for the dishes of the future". The extent of these limitations was underlined by Marx in 1875 in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:

" … what transformation will the nature of the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present functions of the state? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word people with the word state."

This same awareness was expressed by Rosa Luxemburg in 1918 in her pamphlet on the Russian Revolution:

"Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which only have to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social, and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our programme is nothing but a few signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that … (socialism) has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force against property etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways." (The Russian Revolution)

Beyond these general limitations, the resolution is bound by the objectives it sets for itself. It does not claim to make a synthesis of everything that has been clarified by revolutionaries on the period of transition. In particular the resolution does not go into the question of the economic measures for the transformation of social production. On the one hand, it includes the positions which were acquired by the workers' movement before the experience of the Russian Revolution and which have shown themselves to be genuine class frontiers; on the other hand it includes a number of positions concerning the relationshlp between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition. These positions have been derived mainly from the Russian Revolution, and although they are not in themselves class frontiers, they are lessons sufficiently developed by historical experience to be an integral part of the programmatic basis of a revolutionary organization.

These fundamental class frontiers are: the inevitability of a transition period; the primacy of the proletariat's political activity as the precondition and guarantee of the transition towards a classless society; the world-wide character of this transformation; the specificity of the power of the working class, in particular the fact that the proletariat, in contrast to other revolutionary classes in history, has no economic basis within the old society, and therefore does not fight for political domination in order to consolidate itself as an economically ruling class, but in order to put an end to all economic domination by abolishing classes themselves; the impossibility of the proletariat using the bourgeois state apparatus and the necessity for its destruction as a precondition for the establishment of proletarian political power; the inevitability of a state during the period of transition, even though this state will be profoundly different from all other states in history.

These positions already represent a categorical rejection of all the social democratic, anarchist, self-management, and modernist conceptions which have always been present in the workers' movement but which are today pillars of the counter-revolution.

On the basis of these fundamental class positions the resolution goes on to define, primarily from the experiences of the Russian Revolution, certain aspects of the relationship between the proletariat and thestate during the transition period. Thus we have an understanding of the inevitably conservative nature of the transitional state; the impossibility of the proletariat or its party identifying themselves with this state; the necessity for the working class to conceive of its relationship to this state (in which it participates as a politically ruling class) as being a relationship of force: "domination over society is thus its domination over the state"; the necessity for the existence and armed strength of the working class's own specific organizations: only the working class is organized as a class in this period and the state can have no coercive power over the proletariat's own organizations.

These positions enable us to reject the mystifications which served as a basis for "the counter-revolution which developed in Russia under the direction of a degenerating Bolshevik Party" and which are defended today by all the Stalinist and Trotskyist currents as a theoretical justification for identifying state capitalism with socialism.

The content of this resolution thus represents a real safeguard against all the erroneous conceptions which the proletariat could encounter in its coming world-wide assault on the capitalist system. However, no matter how important these positions might be for the future struggles of the class, we must understand the real limits of this acquisition today.

The historic experiences which gave rise to these positions dealing with the relationship between class and state in the transition period are still much too rare and specific for the conclusions that can be drawn from them to be considered class lines by revolutionaries today. Class lines are positions which establish a clear point of demarcation between the bourgeois camp and the proletarian camp. They cannot be drawn up by revolutionaries on the basis of insufficient historical experience or in anticipation of the future; they can only arise on the empirical basis provided by the very history of proletarian struggle, which must be sufficiently clear to supply us with lessons that are'beyond discussion'.7

It is therefore necessary to underline how very limited are the points which we can consider as definite gains on this question: the rejection of the identification of the proletariat or its party with the transitional state; the definition of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state as being one of the dictatorship of the class over the state, and never the state over the class; the defence of the autonomy of the proletariat's own organizations in relation to the state, as being the precondition for the real autonomy and strength of the proletarian dictatorship.

These points are still inevitably abstract and general. They are simply "a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that." The precise forms in which they will be put into practice inevitably remain a "new territory" which only experience will allow us to open up.

A precondition for the effectiveness of a revolutionary organization is not only understanding what it knows and can know, but also what it does not and cannot know. This can only come from its ability to show a real programmatic rigour and to grasp the fundamental lessons provided by the living struggle of the proletarian masses.

THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASS AND STATE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT

The general lack of knowledge about the history of the workers' movement, which has been aggravated by the organic break between the revolutionaries today and the former political organizations of the class, have led some to think that the analysis presented in this resolution is somehow a 'discovery' or an 'originality' of the ICC. A brief summary of the way this question has been tackled (one might even say 'discovered') by revolutionaries since Marx and Engels will soon show how wrong this view is.

In the Communist Manifesto which did not yet make use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", the "first step in the revolution of the working class" is defined as raising "the proletariat to the position of ruling class, (winning) the battle of democracy". This conquest refers in fact to the apparatus of the bourgeois state which the proletariat must use in order:

" ... to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state ie of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible."

Even if the idea of the ultimate disappearance of the state was already affirmed in The Poverty of Philosophy; even if the idea of the inevitable existence of a state during the “first step of the revolution of the working class” is present in the Manifesto, the actual problem of the relationship between the working class and the state during the period of transition was hardly touched upon.

It was the experience of the Paris Commune which really began to allow the problem to be more fully understood through the lessons that Marx and Engels drew from it: the necessity for the proletariat to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus, the setting up of a completely different apparatus which was "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word" (Engels), since it was no longer an organ for the oppression of the majority by a minority. That this apparatus was still burdened with the weight of the past was clearly underlined by Engels who defined it as a "necessary evil”:

" … an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worse sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap." ('Introduction' to The Civil War in France.)

However, despite an intuitive awareness of the necessity for the proletariat to distrust this apparatus inherited from the past (the proletariat, Engels, said "must safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment"), and probably because the extremely short and circumscribed experience of the Paris Commune did not make it possible to really pose the problem of the relationship between the proletariat, the state, and the other non-exploiting classes in society, one of the ideas which came out of the Commune was the identification of the proletarian dictatorship with the transitional state. Thus, three years after the Paris Commune, Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program:

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

This was the theoretical basis which Lenin reformulated in the concept of the 'proletarian state' in State and Revolution; and it was on this basis that the Bolsheviks and the Russian proletariat established the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917.

This attempt at proletarian power confronted the most enormous difficulties - the overwhelming majority of peasants in Russian society, the immediate necessity to wage a pitiless civil war, the international isolation of Russia, the extreme weakness of a productive apparatus destroyed by the First World War and then the civil war. All this was to dramatically highlight the problem of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state.

The grim reality of these events was to prove that it was not enough to baptize the state as 'proletarian' for it to serve the revolutionary interests of the proletariat; that it was not enough to place the proletarian party at the head of the state (to the point where it became totally identified with it) for the state machine to follow the course on which even the most dedicated revolutionaries wanted to set it.

The state apparatus, the state bureaucracy, could not be the expression of proletarian interests alone. As an apparatus whose task was to ensure the survival of society it could only express the survival needs of the moribund Russian economy. What Marxists have said from the very beginning was powerfully vindicated: the imperatives of economic survival imposed themselves mercilessly on the policies of the state. And the economy was a long way from being influenced in any proletarian direction. Lenin had to admit this powerlessness at the Eleventh Congress of the Party, one year after the NEP had begun:

"You communists, you workers, the politically enlightened section of the proletariat, which undertook to administer the state, must be able to arrange it so that the state, which you have taken into your hands, shall function the way you want it to … the state is in our hands: but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in this past year? No! … How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired." (From Lenin and Trotsky, Lenin's Fight Against Stalinism, ed. Russell Block, Pathfinder Press, Inc. New York, 1975, p. 75.)

The identification of the proletarian party with the state did not lead to the state being subordinated to the revolutionary interests of the proletariat, but to the subordination of the party to the Russian state. Under the pressure of the survival needs of the Russian state, which the Bolsheviks saw as the incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the 'proletarian bastion' that had at all costs to be defended, the Bolshevik Party ended up subordinating the tactics of the Communist International to the interests of Russia (for example, alliances with the big European 'social-chauvinist' parties in an attempt to break the 'cordon sanitaire' which was strangling Russia); it was this pressure which led to the signing of the Rapallo Treaty with German imperialism; and it was to prevent any weakening of the power of the 'proletarian' state apparatus and in the name of this state, that the Kronstadt insurgents were crushed by the Red Army.

As for the working masses, the identification of their party with the state led to their vanguard being cut off from them precisely when they most needed it, while the idea of identifying their power with the power of the state rendered them powerless and confused in the face of the growing oppression of the state bureaucracy.8

The counter-revolution which reduced the dictatorship of the proletariat to ashes had arisen out of the very organ which for decades revolutionaries had thought could be identified with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The long process of drawing out the lessons of the Russian experience began right from the beginning of the revolution itself.

The first theoretical reactions came in the midst of an unavoidable confusion; they were limited to attacking partial aspects of the problem and unable to grasp the essence of the question in the tumult of a revolution whose signs of degeneration began to appear right from the start. Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on the Russian Revolution in 1918, which criticized the identification of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the party as well as warning against any limitation of working class political life by the state, contained already the germs of a critique of the identification of the proletariat with the transitional state. Rosa Luxemburg, although she still considered this transitional state as a 'proletarian' state, and although she still retained the idea of the "seizure of power by the socialist party", pointed out the only way of "lopping off the worse side" of this "evil", the state:

" … the only effective means in the hands of the proletarian revolution are: radical measures of a polical and social character, the speediest possible transformation of the social guarantees ol the life of the masses – the kindling of revolutionary idealism, which can be maintained over any length of time only through the intensely active life of the masses themselves under conditions of unlimited political freedom." (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution)

In Russia and within the Bolshevik Party itself, the development of the state bureaucracy, and thus of the antagonism between the proletariat and the state power, provoked early on various reactions, such as that of Ossinky's group or later on the Workers' Group of Miasnikov. These groups, by questioning the rise of the bureacracy, were already raising, albeit in a confused manner, the question of the nature of the state and its relationship to the class.

But it is probably the polemic between Lenin and Trotsky at the Tenth Congress on the question of the unions that most sharply posed the problem of the state. Against Trotsky's idea of more and more integrating the workers' unions into the state inorder to deal with economic difficulties, Lenin defended the necessity to safeguard the autonomy of the proletariat's organization, so that the workers could defend themselves against "the nefarious abuses of the state bureaucracy". Lenin even went so far as to say that the state was not a "workers' state, but a workers' and peasants' state with numerous bureaucratic deformations". Even though these debates took place in a milieu of a generalized confusion (Lenin considered his differences with Trotsky to be questions of contingency, not principle), they were nevertheless authentic expressions of the proletariat's search for answers to the problem of the relationship between its dictatorship and the state.

The Dutch and German Left continued along the path laid down by Rosa Luxemburg concerning the development of the state bureaucracy in Russia. Having been forced to confront the problem of the degeneration of the international policies of the C.l., they were also led to elaborate a critique of what they called 'state socialism'. However, the work done by Jan Appel in collaboration with the Dutch Left on the Basic Principles of Communist Production and Distribution was mainly concerned with the economic aspects of the transition period. Concerning its political aspects they tended to reaffirm the fundamental ideas of Rosa Luxemburg.

The theoretical basis for a more profound understanding of the problem was posed above all by the work of the Italian Left in Belgium, in particular the articles by Mitchell published from no. 28 of Bilan (March-April 1936). While retaining a 'Leninist' position on the quasi-identity between party and class, Bilan was the first to clearly affirm the pernicious character of any identification between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition. At the same time Bilan stressed the importance of the class and its party remaining autonomous from the state. Taking up some of Rosa Luxemburg's ideas, Mitchell saw the vitality of the proletariat's own organs as the necessary antidote to the "worst sides" of the state:

"But in the middle of the most terrible contingent difficulties, the Bolsheviks did not consider the Soviet State as 'an evil inherited by the proletariat … whose worst sides the victorious proletariat … cannot avoid having to lop off as much as possible', but as an organism which could be completely identified with the proletarian dictatorship, ie with the Party.

The result of this important modification was that the foundation of the dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer to be the Party, but the state; and through the ensuing reversal of roles the latter found itself in a course of development which led not to the withering away of the state but to the reinforcement of its coercive and repressive powers. Once an instrument of the world revolution, the proletarian state was inevitably converted into a weapon of the global counter-revolution.

Although Marx, Engels, and above all Lenin had again and again emphasized the necessity to counter the state with a proletarian antidote capable of preventing its degeneration, the Russian Revolution, far from assuring the maintenance and vitality of the class organs of the proletariat, sterilized them by incorporating them into the state; and thus the revolution devoured its own substance." (Mitchell, Bilan)

Bilan's analysis still contained hesitations and weaknesses, in particular its analysis of the class nature of the transitional state, which it still characterized as a 'proletarian state'.

These understandable hesitations and inadequacies were transcended in the analysis of Internationalisme in 1946 (see the article 'The Nature of the State and the Proletarian Revolution', republished in RI's Bulletin d'Etude et de Discussion, no.1, January 1973). Basing itself on an objective analysis of the economic and political nature of the period of transition, Internationalisme clearly affirmed the non-proletarian, anti-socialist character of the transitionalstate:

“The state, insofar as it is reconstituted after the revolution, expresses the immaturity of the conditions for a socialist society. It is the political superstructure of an economic base which is not yet socialist. By its very nature it is opposed to and hostile to socialism. Just as the period of transition is a historically inevitable stage which the proletariat has to go through, so the state is for the proletariat an unavoidable instrument of violence which it must use against the dispossessed classes but with which it cannot identify itself ...

The Russian experience in particular has demonstrated the theoretical falsity of the idea of the workers' state, of the proletarian nature of the state, and of identifying the dictatorship of the proletariat with the utilization by the proletariat of this instrument of coercion, the state." ('Theses on the Nature of the State and the Proletarian Revolution', Internationalisme, no.9, April 1946.)

Internationalisme drew from the experience of the Russian Revolution the vital necessity for the proletariat to exert a strict and permanent control over the state apparatus, which at the slightest reflux would become the principal force of the counter-revolution:

"History and the Russian experience in particular have demonstrated that there is no such thing as a proletarian state as such, but only a state in the hands of the proletariat, a state whose nature remains anti-socialist and which, as soon as the political vigilance of the proletariat weakens, will become the stronghold, the rallying point and the expression of the dispossessed classes of a reborn capitalism." (Ibid)

Still impregnated with certain conceptions held by the Italian Left from which Internationalisme had evolved, especially on the question of the party and of the trade unions, but clearly aware that the subject of the revolution was the working class, Internationalisme defended the necessity for total political freedom for the class and its class-wide organs (which it still thought could take the form of 'unions') in relation to the state. In particular Internationalisme condemned any use of violence by the state against the class. It was also the first to develop a real understanding of the link between economic and political problems during the transition period:

"This period of transition between capitalism and socialism under the political dictatorship of the proletariat expresses itself on the economic terrain in an energetic policy which aims to diminish class exploitation, to constantly increase the proletariat's share in the national income, to alter the relationship between variable capital and constant capital in favour of the former. This policy cannot be based simply on the programmatic declaration of the party; still less is it the prerogative of the state, the organ of coercion and administration. This policy can only find a guarantee and a real expression in the class itself, through the pressure which the class exerts over society, through its opposition to and struggle against all other classes ...

Any tendency to reduce the role of the trade unions after the revolution; any pretence that the existence of a 'workers' state' means the end of freedom to engage in union activities or strikes; any advocacy of fusing the unions with the state, through the theory of handing economic administration over to the unions, which seems revolutionary but which in fact leads to an incorporation of the unions into the state machine; any position which, however revolutionary its intentions, calls for violence within the proletariat and its organizations; any attempt to stand in the way of the broadest workers' democracy and the free play of political struggle and of fractions within the unions: any such policies are anti-working class. They falsify the relationship between party and class and weaken the proletariat's position during the transition period.

The duty of communists will be to energetically denounce and fight against all these tendencies and to work for the full development and independence of the trade union movement, which is an indispensable condition for the victory of socialism." (Ibid)

It was the achievement of Internationalisme to have provided the general theoretical framework in which the question of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition could finally be posed in a solid and coherent manner.

Situated firmly within this process, the resolution presented to the Congress is to be seen as an attempt to reappropriate the principal gains of the workers' movement on this question and as an effort to continue the unending work of deepening the programmatic basis of the proletariat's revolutionary struggle.

We can see that this resolution is in no way a 'discovery' of the ICC. But we must also understand the weight of responsibility which the revolutionary organization is taking on its shoulders by attempting to assume this inheritance.

Contribution from the 2nd Congress of RI

1. Between capitalism and socialism there inevitably exists a more or less long period of transition from one to the other. It is transitional in the sense that it does not have its own stable mode of production. Its specific characteristic is the systematic and uninterrupted transformation of the relations of production. By means of political and economic measures it undermines the basis of the old system and lays the basis for new social relations, for communism.

2. Communism is a society without classes. The period of transition, which can only really develop after the victory of the revolution on a world scale, is a dynamic period which tends towards the disappearance of classes, but it still suffers from class divisions and the persistence of divergent and antagonistic interests in society.

3. In contrast to previous periods of transition in history, all of which unfolded within the old society and culminated in revolution, the period of transition from capitalism to communism can only begin after the destruction of the political domination of capitalism, and in the first instance of the capitalist state. The general political seizure of power over society by the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat, precedes, conditions, and guarantees the process of economic and social transformation.

4. In contrast to the bourgeois revolutions which took place within the framework of the region or nation, socialism can only be realized on a world scale. The extension of the revolution and of the civil war is thus the primordial act which conditions the possibilities for and the rhythm of the social-economic transformation in the country or countries where the proletariat has already taken political power.

5. A product of the division of society into classes, the dictatorship of the proletariat is distinguished from the power of previous ruling classes by the following essential characteristics:

a. Not being an economically dominant class, the working class does not exert power in order to defend any economic privileges (it does not and can never have any) but in order to destroy all privileges.

b. For this reason, unlike other ruling classes, it has no need to hide its goals, to mystify the oppressed classes by presenting its dictatorship as the reign of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

c. This dictatorship does not have the aim of perpetuating the existing state of affairs, but on the contrary of revolutionizing the social fabric so as to ensure the advent of a genuinely human society without exploitation or oppression.

6. In all class societies, in order to prevent the class antagonisms of society from exploding into permanent struggles which threaten its entire equilibrium, endangering the very existence of that society, superstructures and institutions have emerged of which the state is the highest expression, whose essential function is to maintain these struggles within an acceptable framework, to adapt themselves to and conserve the existing economic infrastructure.

7. The period of transition to socialism is as we have seen a society still divided into classes. This is the reason why there will inevitably arise in this period this superstructural organism, this unavoidable evil, the state.

But there are fundamental differences between this state and the state in other class societies:

a. In the first place, the fact that for the first time in history it is the state of the majority of exploited and non-exploiting classes against the minority (the former ruling class), and not of an exploiting minority for the oppression of the majority.

b. The fact that it is not constituted on the basis of a specialized body - of political parties - but on the basis of delegates elected by local territorial councils and revocable by them.

c. This whole state organization categorically excludes any participation in it by exploiting classes and strata, who are deprlved of all political and civil rights.

d. The fact that the remuneration of the members of this state is never more than that of the workers.

It is in this sense that marxists can justflably speak of a semi-state, an altered state, a state on the road to extinction.

8. The experience of the victorious Russian Revolution bears with it certain precise though negative, lessons concerning the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and state institutions in the transition period:

a. The function of proletarian political parties is fundamentally different from that of bourgeois political parties, above all because they are not and cannot be state organisms. While bourgeois parties can only exist by tending to become integrated into the state apparatus, the integration of workers' parties into the state after the revolution perverts them and causes them to completely lose their specific function in the class.

b. Because the function of the state is the conservation of the existing social order the state in previous class societies could not fail to be identified with the economically dominant class, to become the main expression of its general interests and of its unity, both within that class and in the face of other classes in society.

This is not at all the case ror the proletariat which does not tend to conserve the existing state of affairs but to overthrow and transform it. That is why its dictatorship cannot find its authentic and total expression in a conservative instrument par excellence, the state.

There can be no such thing as a 'socialist state'. This is a contradiction in terms. But soclalism is the historic interest of the proletariat, its own evolving essence. There is identity and identification between the two. To the extent that onc can talk of a socialist proletariat, one cannot speak of a workers' state, a proletarlan state.

We also consider that, on the basis of the Russian experience, a theoretical effort must be made concerning the necessary distinction between the state in the period of transition, which the proletariat is forced to use and over which the proletarlat must exert its dlctatorship at all times, and the proletarian dictatorship itself. Politically this identification has been tremendously harmful to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, serving as a mystifying cover for the counter-revolution in Russia, under the direction of a degenerating Bolshevik party.

c. The state in the transition period, with all its distinctive characteristics and limitations, still bears all the marks of a class-divided society. It can never be the organ which establishes and symbolizes socialism. Only the proletarian class is the seed-bearer of socialism. Its domination over society is also its domination over the state, and can only be assured by its own class dictatorship.

9. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be defined by:

a. The necessity to maintain the unity and autonomy of the working class in its own organs, the workers' councils, accompanied by the proletariat's dissolution of all organs belonging to other classes as classes.

b. The proletariat's exertion of its hegemony in society, which means a hegemonic participation within the organizations from which the state emanates, while denying the other classes any right to intervene in its own class organs.

c. The proletariat's assertion of itself as the only armed class, independently of any other organ, above all the state.

1This 'increase' in the labour force, greeted by the American bourgeoisie as the great success of the 'recovery', simply expresses a certain decrease in the number of unemployed, an absurd success when there were 9 million unemployed in 1975.

2This survival 'by credit' is still clearer in the so-called 'socialist' countries where the debt of all the countries in the Russian bloc to the West is now calculated to be 35 billion dollars. The situation is so serious that they have already asked for a moratorium. North Korea has even stopped paying the interest back on its debt which is something like 1.5 billion dollars. The situation is identical in the non-oil producing backward countries where the current deficit has now reached the incredible figure of 37 billion dollars. Faced with this state of affairs, bankers and Western governments have therefore decided to curtail their loans to the East, and within their own bloc loans to countries like Italy and Great Britain are matched with all sorts of conditions which undermine any pretence to 'national independence'; and these loans are only granted because of the necessity to safeguard the cohesion of their own bloc. Russia has only granted new credits on condition of a stricter control of its clients' foreign policy.

3 It is no accident that this view is very similar to the Trotskyist analysis of someone like E. Mandel, who claimed to see in the 1967-8 crisis a "new long wave of stagnant tonality", "the result of a traditional cyclical movement (septennial, decennial, or quinquennial)". In short the Bordigist and Trotskyist augurs are the birds of good omen for suffering capitalism, to which they ascribe the virtues of immortality.

4The hourly rate of pay went from $4.20 to $6.22 in the USA during the period 1970-75, while in Belgium it rose from $2.08 to $6.46 and even in Sweden it rose from $2.93 to $7.12 (City Money International, May 1976).

5This was effectively done during the last quarter when Japan's competivity threatened to inundate the EEC countries with its commodities, so that the latter forced Japan to climb down. It yielded to the EEC's decision whereby Japan would allocate its exports of steel according to quotas, limiting its policy of dumping and opening up its own market much more to European goods.

6 80 percent of the unemployed hit by the crisis were unable to find another permanent job during the 'recovery' and are attempting to live by various forms of casual or illicit labour. This is becoming less and less possible. The capitalist class speaks not only of cutting 'social welfare' but of creating work camps. For example, in Belgium, the Minister of Labour has announced a a plan to force the unemployed to work for three days a week for nothing under pain of having its welfare immediately withdrawn.

7 The 'programmatic basis' of a revolutionary organization is made up of all the principal positions and analyses which define the general framework of its activity. Positions that represent 'class lines' are part of this and are inevitably its backbone. But the activity of a revolutionary organization cannot be defined in terms of class lines alone. The necessity for the highest degree of coherence in its intervention obliges it to search for the highest degree of coherence in its conceptions, and thus to define as clearly as possible the general framework which links together all the class positions and situates them in a coherent, global vision of the aims and methods of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.

8These two factors partly explain the often extreme confusion which characterized the proletariat's outbursts against the counter-revolution (eg Kronstadt).

Life of the ICC:

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Congress Revolution Internationale

The Communist Left in Russia, 1918-1930, Part 1

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When one talks about
the revolutionary opposition to the degeneration of the revolution in Russia, or of the
Communist International, it is generally assumed that one is referring to the
Left Opposition led by Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders. The wholly
inadequate criticisms of the degeneration made after much delay by those who
had played an active part in that degeneration are taken to be the be all and
end all of communist opposition inside Russia or the
International. The much deeper and more consistent critique elaborated by the
‘left wing communists' long before
the Left Opposition came into existence in 1923 is either ignored or dismissed
as the ravings of sectarian lunatics cut off from the ‘real world'. This
distortion of the past is simply an expression of the long ascendancy of the
counter-revolution since the years of the revolutionary struggle ended in the
1920s. It is always in the interests of the capitalist counter-revolution to
hide or distort the genuinely revolutionary history of the working class and
its communist minorities, because only in this way can the bourgeoisie hope to
obscure the historic nature of the
proletariat as the class that is destined to lead mankind into the reign of
freedom.

Against this
distortion of the past revolutionaries must reaffirm and re-examine the
historic struggles of the proletariat; not out of an archivist's interest in
history, but because the past experience of the class forms and unbreakable
chain with its present and future experience, and only by understanding the
past can the present and the future also be understood and outlined. We hope
that this study of the communist left in Russia will help to
reclaim an important chapter in the history of the communist movement from the
distortions of bourgeois history, whether academic or leftist. But more
important we hope that it will serve to clarify some of the lessons that emerge
out of the struggles, failures and victories of the Russian left, lessons that
have a vital role to play in the reconstitution of the communist movement
today.

"In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be
solved in Russia". (Rosa Luxemburg,
in The Russian Revolution.)

In the wake of the
counter-revolution which inundated the world after the revolutionary years of
1917-23, a myth grew up around Bolshevism, portraying it as a specific product
of Russian ‘backwardness' and Asiatic barbarism. Remnants of the German and
Dutch left communists, profoundly demoralised by the degeneration and death of
the revolution in Russia, regressed to the semi-Menshevik position that the
bourgeois development of Russia in the twenties and thirties was inevitable,
because Russia had been unripe for communism; and Bolshevism was defined as an
ideology of the ‘intelligentsia' who had sought only the capitalist modernisation of Russia and who had thus carried through
a ‘bourgeois' or ‘state-capitalist' revolution in place of an impotent
bourgeoisie, basing itself on an immature proletariat.

This whole theory
was a total revision of the genuinely proletariat character of the Russian
Revolution and of Bolshevism, and a repudiation by many left communists of
their own participation in the heroic events that began in October 1917. But
like all myths, it contained a grain of truth. While fundamentally a product of
international conditions, the
workers' movement also contains certain specificities arising out of particular
national-historic conditions. Today, for example, it is not by accident that
the re-emerging communist movement is strongest in the countries of Western Europe and far weaker,
indeed almost non-existent, in the countries of the Eastern bloc. This is a
product of the specific manner in which the historic events of the last fifty
years have unfolded, in particular the way in which the capitalist
counter-revolution has organised itself in different countries. Similarly, when
we examine the revolutionary movement in Russia prior to and following the
October insurrection: while its essence can only be grasped by considering it
in the context of the international workers' movement, certain of its strengths
and weaknesses can be linked to the particular conditions then prevailing in
Russia.

In many ways, the
weaknesses of the Russian revolutionary movement were simply the other side of
the coin of its strengths. The ability of the Russian proletariat to move very
quickly towards a revolutionary solution to its problems was largely determined
by the nature of the Tsarist regime. Authoritarian, decrepit, incapable of
erecting any stable ‘buffers' between itself and the proletarian menace, the
Tsarist system ensured that any attempt of the proletariat to defend itself
would immediately bring itself up against the repressive forces of the state.
The Russian proletariat, young but highly combative and concentrated, was
neither given the time nor the political space to develop a reformist mentality
which could lead it to identify the defence of its immediate material interests
with the survival of its ‘motherland'. It was thus far easier for the Russian
proletariat to refuse all identification with the Tsarist war-effort after
1914, and to see the destruction of the Tsarist political apparatus as a
precondition for its advance in 1917. Very broadly, and without trying to make
too mechanical a connection between the Russian proletariat and its
revolutionary minorities, these strengths of the Russian class were one of the
factors which allowed the Bolsheviks to stand at the head of the world
revolutionary movement both in 1914 and in 1917, with their ringing
denunciation of the war and their uncompromising advocacy of the need to smash
the machinery of the bourgeois state.

But as we have said,
these strengths were also weaknesses: the immaturity of the Russian
proletariat, its lack of organisational traditions, the suddenness with which
it was propelled into a revolutionary situation, tended to leave important
lacunae in the theoretical arsenal of its revolutionary minorities. It is
significant, for example, that most of the pertinent critiques of the reformist
practices of social democracy and trade unionism began to be elaborated
precisely in those countries where these practices were most firmly
established, in particular, Holland and Germany. It was here,
rather than in Russia where the
proletariat was still struggling for parliamentary and trade union rights, that
the pernicious dangers of reformist habits were first understood by
revolutionaries. For example, the work of Anton Pannekoek and the Dutch Tribune group in the years preceding
World War 1 helped to prepare the ground for the radical break that the German
and Dutch revolutionaries made with the old reformist tactics after the war.
The same applies to Bordiga's Abstentionist Fraction in Italy. In contrast to
this, the Bolsheviks never really understood that the period of reformist
‘tactics' had ended once and for all with the entry of capitalism into its
death throes in 1914; or at least they never fully understood all the implications
of the new epoch for revolutionary strategy. The conflicts over trade union and
parliamentary tactics which rent the Communist International after 1920
resulted to a large extent from the failure of the Russian party to thoroughly
grasp the needs of the new epoch; and this failure was not entirely restricted
to the Bolshevik leadership: it was also reflected in the fact that the
critique of unionism, parliamentarism, substitutionism and other social
democratic hangovers which the Russian left communists made never achieved the
same level of clarity as that of their Dutch, German and Italian counterparts.

But here again we
must temper this observation with an understanding of the international context
of the revolution. The theoretical weaknesses of the Bolshevik party were not
absolutes, precisely because this was a genuinely proletarian party, and
therefore open to all new developments and understandings that come from the
proletarian struggle when it is on an ascendant path. Had the revolution of October
extended itself internationally, these weaknesses could have been overcome; the
social democratic deformations in Bolshevism only hardened into a fundamental
obstacle to the revolutionary movement when the world revolution entered into a
reflux and the proletarian bastion in Russia became cripplingly
isolated. The rapid slide of the Communist International into opportunism,
largely under the influence of the Russian party, was, amongst other things,
the result of the Bolsheviks' attempt to balance the survival needs of the
Soviet state with the international needs of the revolution, an attempt which
became increasingly contradictory the more the tide of revolution receded, and
which was finally abandoned with the triumph of ‘socialism in one country', which
signified the death of the Communist International and crowned the victory of
the counter-revolution in Russia.

If the extreme
isolation of the Russian bastion was to ultimately prevent the Bolshevik party
from going beyond its initial errors, it also severely hampered the theoretical
development of the left communist fractions who detached themselves from the
degenerating Russian party. Cut off from the discussion and debate which was
still being maintained by the left fractions in Europe, subjected to a ruthless
repression by an increasingly totalitarian state, the Russian left tended to
restrict itself to a formal critique of the degeneration of the Russian
counter-revolution, and rarely penetrated to the roots of the degeneration. The
sheer novelty and rapidity of the Russian experience were to leave an entire
generation of revolutionaries utterly confused as to what had happened there;
not until the thirties and forties did a coherent understanding began to emerge
out of the remaining communist fractions. But this understanding came above all
from revolutionaries in Europe and America; the Russian left
was too close, too caught up in the whole experience to elaborate an objective,
global analysis of the phenomenon. We can therefore only endorse the assessment
of the Russian left made by the comrades of Internationalism:

"The enduring contribution of
these small groups trying to come to grips with the new situation, is not that
they could have possibly understood the entire process of state capitalism at
its beginnings nor that they expressed a totally coherent programme, but that
they sounded the alarm and were among the first to prophetically denounce the
establishment of a state capitalist regime; their legacy in the workers'
movement is to have provided the political proof that the Russian proletariat
did not go down to defeat in silence". (J. Allen, ‘A Contribution on the
Question of State Capitalism', Internationalism
n°6)

What is the communist left?

An aspect of the
myth of ‘backward' or ‘bourgeois' Bolshevism is the idea that there is an
impassable gulf between the Bolsheviks, who are presented as partisans of state
capitalism and party dictatorship, and the left communists who are painted as
the real defenders of workers' power and the communist transformation of
society. This idea has a particular appeal to councilists and libertarians who
want to identify only with what pleases them in the past workers' movement and
reject the real experience of the class as soon as they discover its blemishes.
In the real world however there is a direct and irreplaceable continuity
between what Bolshevism originally was and what the left communists were in the
1920s and after.

The Bolsheviks were
themselves on the extreme left of the pre-war social democratic movement,
especially because of their resolute defence of organisational coherence and
the need for a revolutionary party independent of all reformist and
confusionist tendencies of the workers' movement.[1]
Their position on the 1914-18 war (or rather the position of Lenin and his
supporters in the party) was again the most radical of all the anti-war stances
in the socialist movement: "turn the imperialist war into a civil war"; and
their call for the revolutionary liquidation of the bourgeois state in 1917 made
them the rallying point for all the intransigent revolutionary minorities in
the world. The ‘left radicals' of Germany - who were to provide the main
nucleus of the KAPD (German Workers' Communist Party) in 1920 - were directly
inspired by the example of the Bolsheviks, especially when they began to call
for the constitution of a new revolutionary party in total opposition to the
social-patriots of the SPD (Social Democratic Party).[2]

Thus, up to a
certain point the Bolsheviks and the Communist International, which was largely
set up on their initiative, represented the pre-war ‘left'; they became the communist movement. Left communism only has a meaning as a
reaction against the degeneration of
this original communist vanguard, against the betrayal of what the vanguard has
stood for at the beginning. Left communism thus emerged organically out of the
original communist movement led by the Bolsheviks and the CI.

This becomes
startlingly clear when we look at the origins of the communist left in Russia itself. All the Russian left fractions had
their origins in the Bolshevik party. This is in itself proof of the
proletarian character of Bolshevism. Because it was a living expression of the
working class, the only class that can make a radical and continuous critique
of its own practice, the Bolshevik party perpetually generated revolutionary
fractions out of its own body. At every step in its degeneration voices were
raised inside the party in protest, groupings were formed inside the party, or
split from it, to denounce the betrayals of Bolshevism's original programme.
Only when the party had been buried by its Stalinist gravediggers did these
fractions no longer spring from it. The Russian left communists were all
Bolsheviks; it was they who defended a continuity with the Bolshevism of the
heroic years of the revolution, while those who calumniated, persecuted and
exterminated them, no matter how exalted their names, were the ones who were
breaking with the essence of Bolshevism.

The Communist Left during the heroic years of the
revolution, 1918-21

The first months

The Bolshevik party
was actually the first party of the reconstituted workers' movement to give
rise to a ‘left'. This was precisely because it was the first party to lead a
successful insurrection against the bourgeois state. In the conception of the
workers' movement of the time, the role of the party was to organise the
seizure of power and to assume governmental office in the new ‘proletarian
state'. Indeed the proletarian character of the state, according to this
conception, was guaranteed by the fact that it was in the hands of a
proletarian party which sort to lead the working class towards socialism. The
fundamentally erroneous character of this dual or treble substitution
(party-state, state-class, party-class) was to be laid bare over the ensuing
years of the revolution; but it was the tragic destiny of the Bolshevik party
to put the theoretical errors of the entire workers' movement into practice,
and thus to demonstrate through their own negative experience the absolute
falsity of this conception. All the shame and betrayals associated with
Bolshevism derived from the fact that the revolution was born and died in
Russia, and that the Bolshevik party, by identifying itself with the state that
was to become the internal agent of the counter-revolution, itself became an
organiser of the revolution's decline. Had the revolution broken out and
degenerated in Germany and not Russia, the names of
Luxemburg and Liebknecht might today cause the same ambiguous and mixed
reactions as do the names Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Zinoviev. It is only
because of the great adventure that the Bolsheviks undertook that
revolutionaries can assert unambiguously today: the role of the party is not to
take power on behalf of the class, and the interests of the class are not
identical to the interests of the post-revolutionary state. But it has taken
many years of painful reflection to be able to spell out these apparently
simple lessons.

As soon as it became
a party ‘in charge of' the Soviet state in October 1917, the Bolshevik party
began to degenerate: not all at once, not in a completely unbroken downward
course, and, as long as the world revolution was on the agenda, not
irreversibly. But nevertheless, the general process of degeneration began
immediately. Whereas formerly the party had been able to act freely as the most
resolute fraction of the class, always showing the way to deepen and extend the
class struggle, the Bolsheviks' assumption of state power put a growing brake
on their ability to identify with and participate in the proletarian class
struggle. From now on the needs of the state were to more and more take
precedence over the needs of the class; and although this dichotomy was hidden
at first by the very intensity of the class struggle, it was nevertheless the
expression of an intrinsic and fundamental contradiction between the nature of
the state and the nature of the proletariat. The needs of the state are
essentially concerned with holding society together, of containing the class
struggle within a framework acceptable to the maintenance of the social status
quo; the needs of the proletariat, and thus of its communist vanguard, can only
be the extension and deepening of its class struggle towards the overthrowing
of all existing conditions. Now as long as the revolutionary movement of the
class was on the ascendant both in Russia and
internationally, the Soviet state could be used to guard the conquests of the
revolution; it could be an instrument in the hands of the revolutionary class.
But as soon as the real movement of the class disappeared, the status quo
defended by the state could only be the status quo of capital. This was the
general tendency, but in fact the contradictions between the proletariat and
the new state began to appear immediately, because of the immaturity of the
class and the Bolsheviks in their attitude to the state, and above all because
the consequences of the revolution remaining isolated in Russia began to take
their toll on the new proletarian bastion from the very beginning. Faced with a
number of problems which could only be solved on the international arena - the
organisation of a war ravaged economy, relations with huge peasant masses
inside Russia, and with a hostile capitalist world outside - the Bolsheviks
lacked experience to take measures which could have at least diminished the
nefarious consequences of these problems; as it was the measures which they
took tended to compound the problems rather than relieve them. And the
overwhelming majority of the errors they made flowed from the fact that they
had taken charge of the state, and thus felt justified in identifying
proletarian interests with the needs of the Soviet state, and indeed
subordinating the former to the latter.

Although no
communist fraction in Russia at the time
succeeded in making a fundamental critique of these substitutionist errors -
and this was to remain a failing on the part of the entire Russian left - a
revolutionary opposition to the Bolsheviks' early state early state policies
crystallised only a few months after the seizure of power. This opposition took
the form of the Left Communist group around Ossinski, Bukharin, Radek, Smirnov
and others; organised mainly in the party's Moscow Regional Bureau and
expressing itself through the factional journal Kommunist. This opposition of early 1918 was the first organised
Bolshevik fraction to criticise the party's attempts to discipline the working
class. But the original raison d'être of the Left Communist group was
its opposition to the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty with German
imperialism.

This is not the
place to undertake a detailed study of the whole Brest-Litovsk issue. In brief
the main debate was between Lenin and the Left Communists (led on this issue by
Bukharin) who were in favour of a revolutionary war against Germany and denounced the
peace treaty as a ‘betrayal' of the world revolution. Lenin defended the
signing of the treaty as a way of obtaining a ‘breathing space' while
reorganising the military capacities of the Soviet state. The Lefts insisted
that:

"The adoption of the
conditions dictated by the German imperialists would be an act going contrary
to our whole policy of revolutionary socialism; it would lead to the
abandonment of the proper line of international socialism, in domestic as well
as foreign policy, and could lead to one of the worse kinds of opportunism." (R. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, 1960,
p.73)

Acknowledging the
technical inability of the Soviet state to wage a conventional war against
German imperialism, they advocated a strategy of tying the German army down
with guerrilla tactics by flying detachments of Red partisans. The waging of
the "holy war against German imperialism", they hoped, would serve as an
example to the world proletariat and inspire it to join in the fight.

We do not wish to
enter into a retrospective debate about the strategic possibilities open to the
Soviet power in 1918. We should make it clear that both Lenin and the Left Communists recognised that the only
ultimate hope of the Russian proletariat lay in the world extension of the
revolution; both of their motivations and actions were placed within a
framework of internationalism and both presented their arguments in full view
of the Russian proletariat organised in the Soviets. We therefore consider it
inadmissible to define the signing of the treaty as a ‘betrayal' of
internationalism. Nor as it turned out, did it mean the collapse of the
revolution in Russia or Germany, as Bukharin had
feared. In any case, these strategic considerations are imponderable to some
extent; one of the most important political
questions deriving from the Brest-Litovsk debate is the following: is
‘revolutionary war' the principal means for extending the revolution? Does the
proletariat in power in one region have the task of exporting revolution at
bayonet point to the world proletariat? The comments of the Italian Left on the
Brest-Litovsk question are significant in this regard:

"Of the two
tendencies in the Bolshevik party who confronted each other at the time of
Brest-Litovsk, Lenin's and Bukharin's, we think that it was the former who was
more in line with the needs of the world revolution. The positions of the
fraction led by Bukharin, according to which the function of the proletarian
state was to liberate the workers of other countries through a ‘revolutionary
war', are in contradiction with the very nature of the proletarian revolution
and the historic role of the proletariat." (‘Parti-Etat-Internationale:
L'Etat Proletarien', Bilan n°18,
April-May, 1935)

In contrast to the
bourgeois revolution, which could indeed be exported by military conquest, the
proletarian revolution depends on the conscious struggle of the proletariat of
each country against its own bourgeoisie: "The victory of a proletarian state
against a capitalist state (in the territorial sense of the word) in no way
means the victory of the revolution". (ibid). The Red Army's advance into Poland in 1920, which only
succeeded in driving the Polish workers into the arms of their own bourgeoisie,
is proof that military victories by a proletarian bastion cannot substitute for
the conscious political action of the world proletariat, and therefore the
extension of the revolution is first and foremost a political task. The foundation of the Communist International in
1919 was thus a far greater contribution to the world revolution than any
‘revolutionary war' could have been.

The actual signing
of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, its ratification by the party and the Soviets,
coupled with the Left's earnest desire to avoid a split within the party over
the issue, ended the first stage of the Left Communists' agitation. Now that
the Soviet state had acquired its ‘breathing space', many of the immediate problems
facing the party were centred around the organisation of the war-torn economy
within Russia. And it was on this
question that the Left Communist group contributed its most valuable insights
into the dangers facing the revolutionary bastion. Bukharin, the fervent
partisan of revolutionary war, was less interested in formulating a critique of
majority Bolshevik policy on the internal organisation of the regime; from now
on many of the most pertinent criticisms of the leadership's domestic policies
were to come from the pen of Ossinsky, who was to prove himself to be a much
more consistent oppositional figure than Bukharin.

In the early months
of 1918 the Bolshevik leadership attempted to deal with Russia's economic turmoil
in a perfunctorily ‘pragmatic' manner. In a speech given to the Bolshevik
Central Committee and published as The
Immediate tasks of the Soviet Regime, Lenin advocated the formation of
state trusts in which the existing bourgeois experts and owners were to be
retained, though under the supervision of the ‘proletarian' state. The workers
in turn would have to accept the Taylor system of
‘scientific management' (once denounced by Lenin himself as the enslavement of
man by the machine), and one-man management in the factories: "The revolution demands... precisely in the
interests of socialism that the masses unquestionably
obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process". All of this
meant that the factory committee movement, which had spread like wildfire ever
since February 1917, was to be curbed; expropriations carried out by such
committees were to be discouraged, their growing authority in the factories was
to be reduced to a mere ‘checking' function, and they were to be made into
appendages of the trade unions, which were much more manageable institutions,
already incorporated into the new state apparatus.

The leadership
presented these policies as the best way for the revolutionary regime to
overcome the threat of economic chaos and to rationalise the economy towards an
eventual social construction, when the world revolution extended itself. Lenin
frankly called this system "state-capitalism", by which he understood the
proletarian state's control of the capitalist economy in the interests of the
revolution. In a polemic against the Left Communists (Left-wing Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality) Lenin
argued that such a system of state capitalism would be a definite advance in a
backward country like Russia, where the main
danger of counter-revolution was the fragmented, archaic petty bourgeois mass
of the peasantry. This conception remained a tenet of creed to the Bolsheviks
and blinded them to the fact that the internal counter-revolution was
expressing itself first and foremost through the state, not through the peasants.
The Left Communists too were worried about the possibility of the revolution
degenerating into a system of "petty bourgeois economic relations" (‘Theses on
the Present Situation', Kommunist, n°1,
April 1918, available in English in Daniels, A Documentary History of the Revolution), and they also shared the
leadership's conviction that nationalisation by the ‘proletarian' state was
indeed a socialist measure, and in fact they demanded its extension to the
whole economy. Clearly they could not have been fully aware of what the danger
of "state capitalism" actually meant, but basing themselves on a strong class
instinct, they quickly saw the dangers inherent in a system which claimed to
organise the exploitation of the workers in the interests of ‘socialism'.
Ossinsky's prophetic warning is now well known:

"We do not stand for
the point of view of ‘construction of socialism under the direction of the
trusts'. We stand for the point of view of the construction of the proletarian
society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by ukases of
‘captains of industry'...We proceed from trust for the class instinct, to the
active class initiative of the proletariat. It cannot be otherwise. If the
proletariat does not know how to create the necessary prerequisites for
socialist organisation of labour, no-one can do this for it and no-one can
compel it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find
itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the influence of
another social class or is in the hands of the soviet power; then the soviet
power will be forced to seek support against the proletariat from another class
(e.g. the peasantry), and by this it will destroy itself as the dictatorship of
the proletariat. Socialism and socialist organisation must be set up by the
proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all; something else will be
set up - state capitalism." (‘On the Building of Socialism', Kommunist n°2, April 1918, in Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, p. 85).

Against this threat
the Left Communists advocated workers' control of industry through a system of
factory committees and ‘economic councils'. They defined their role as that of
a "responsible proletarian opposition" constituted within the party to prevent
the party and the soviet regime "deviating" towards the "ruinous path of petty
bourgeois policies" (‘Theses on the Present Situation', Kommunist no. 1, in Daniels, A
Documentary History etc).

That the dangers
that the Lefts were warning against were not restricted to the economic plane,
but had far-reaching political ramifications, can be shown by another
warning they issued against the attempt to impose labour discipline from above:

"With the policy of
administering enterprises on the basis of broad participation by capitalists
and semi-bureaucratic centralisation it is natural to combine a labour policy
directed towards the installation amongst the workers of discipline under the
banner of ‘self-discipline', towards the introduction of obligatory labour for
workers (such a programme was advocated by the rightist Bolsheviks), piecework
payment, lengthening of the working day, etc.

"The form of governmental administration will have to
develop in the direction of bureaucratic centralisation, the deprivation of the
local soviets of their independence, and in practice the rejection of the type
of ‘commune state' administered from below" (ibid).

Kommunist's defence of factory committees,
soviets, and working class self activity was important not because it provided
a solution to the economic problems facing Russia, or still less a formula for
the ‘immediate construction of communism' in Russia; the Lefts explicitly
stated that "socialism cannot be put into operation in one country and a
backward one at that" (L. Schapiro, The
Origin of the Communist Autocracy, 1955, p. 137). The imposition of labour
discipline by the state, the incorporation of the proletariat's autonomous
organs into the state apparatus, were above all blows against the political domination of the Russian
working class. As the ICC has often pointed out,[3]
the political power of the class is the only guarantee of the successful
outcome of the revolution. And this political power can only be exercised by
the mass organs of the class, by its factory committees and assemblies, its
soviets, its militias. In undermining the authority of these organs the
policies of the Bolshevik leadership were posing a grave threat to the
revolution itself. The danger signals so perceptively observed by the Left Communists
in the early months of the revolution were to become even more serious during
the Civil War period. In fact this period would in many ways determine the
ultimate destiny of the revolution inside Russia.

The civil war

The period of the
Civil War in Russia, from 1918-20,
above all attests to the immense dangers facing a proletarian outpost if it is
not immediately reinforced by the armies of the world revolution. Because the
revolution did not take root outside Russia, the Russian
proletariat had to fight virtually alone against the attacks of the White
counter-revolution and its imperialist backers. In military terms, the heroic
resistance of the Russian workers was victorious, but politically the Russian
proletariat emerged from the Civil War decimated, exhausted, fragmented, and
more or less deprived of any real control of the Soviet state. In their fervour
to win the military struggle, the Bolsheviks had accelerated the decline of
working class political power by a continuous militarisation of social and
economic life. The concentration of all effective power in the higher echelons
of the state machine allowed the military struggle to be prosecuted in a
ruthless and effective manner, but it further undermined the real bastions of
the revolution: the mass unitary organs of the class. The bureaucratisation of
the Soviet regime that occurred during this period was to become irreversible
with the reflux of the world revolution after 1921.

With the outbreak of
hostilities in 1918, there was a general closing of ranks within the Bolshevik
party, as everybody recognised the need for unity in action against the
external danger. The Kommunist group,
whose publication had ceased to appear after being severely hounded by the
party leadership, ceased to exist, and its original nucleus went in two
directions in response to the Civil War.

One tendency,
exemplified by Radek and Bukharin, greeted the economic measure imposed by
Civil War with unabashed enthusiasm. For them, the wholesale nationalisations,
suppression of trade and monetary forms, and requisitioning of the peasantry,
the so-called ‘War Communism' measures, represented a real break with the
previous "state capitalist" phase and constituted a major advance towards
communist relations of production. Bukharin even wrote a book, The Economics of the Transition Period,
explaining how economic disintegration and even forced labour were inevitable
preliminary stages in the transition to communism; he was clearly trying to
demonstrate ‘theoretically' that Russia under War Communism, which had been
adopted simply as a series of emergency measures to deal with a desperate
situation, was a society in transition to communism. Former Left Communists
like Bukharin were quite prepared to abandon their previous criticisms of
one-man management and labour discipline, because for them the Soviet state was
no longer trying to compromise with domestic capital, but was acting resolutely
as an organ of communist transformation. In his Economics of the Transition Period, Bukharin argued that the strengthening of the Soviet
state, its increasing absorption of social and economic life, represented a
decisive advance towards communism:

"The
‘governmentalisation' of the trade unions and in practice all mass organs of
the proletariat result from the inner logic of the transformation process
itself. The smallest germ cell of the labour apparatus must become a support
for the general process of organisation, which is planfully led and conducted
by the collective reason of the working class, which has its material
embodiment in the highest, all-embracing organisation, its state power. Thus
the system of state capitalism is dialectically transformed into its own
opposite, into the governmental form of workers' socialism." (Bukharin, Economics of the Transition Period,
quoted in A Documentary History of
Communism, edited by R. Daniels, 1960, p. 180).

With such ideas
Bukharin ‘dialectically' reversed the marxist understanding that the movement
towards a communist society will be characterised by a progressive weakening, a
"withering away" of the state machine. Bukharin was still a revolutionary when
he wrote the Economics; but between
his theories of a statified ‘communism' entirely contained within one nation,
and the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in one country' there is a definite
continuity.

While Bukharin made
his peace with War Communism, those Lefts who had been most consistent in their
advocacy of workers' democracy continued to defend this principle in the face
of the growing militarisation of the regime. In 1919 the Democratic Centralism
group was formed around Ossinsky, Sapranov and others. They continued to
dispute the principle of one-man management in industry and continued to
advocate the collective or "collegial" principle as "The strongest weapon
against the growth of departmentalism and bureaucratic deadening of the soviet
apparatus" (Theses on the Collegial
Principle and Individual Authority). While accepting the need for the use
of bourgeois specialists in industry and the army, they also stressed the need
for these specialists to be put under the control of the rank and file. "No one disputes the necessity of using the spetsy - the dispute is over how to use them"
(Sapranov, quoted in Daniels, Conscience
of the Revolution, p.109).

At the same time the
Democratic Centralists, or ‘Decists' as they were known, protested against the
loss of initiative by local soviets, and they suggested a series of reforms
aimed at restoring them as effective organs of workers' democracy; it was policies
of this sort which led critics to remark that the Decists were more interested
in democracy than in centralism. Finally the Decists called for the restoration
of democratic practices in the party. At the Ninth Congress of the RCP in 1920
they attacked the bureaucratisation of the party, the increasing concentration
of power in the hands of a tiny minority. It is indicative of the influence
that these criticisms could still have in the party that the congress ended up
voting a manifesto vigorously calling for "broader criticism of the central as
well as the local party institutions", and the rejection of "any kind of
repression against comrades because they have different ideas". (Resolution of
the Ninth Party Congress, ‘On the Next Tasks of Building the Party'.)

In general the
Decists' attitude to the tasks of the Soviet regime in a period of Civil War
can be summed up in Ossinsky's words to that same Congress:

"The basic slogan
which we should proclaim at the present time is the unification of military work,
military forms of organisation and methods of administration, with the creative
initiative of the conscious workers. If, under the banner of military work, you
in fact begin to implant bureaucratism, we will disperse our own forces and
fail to fulfil our tasks." (Quoted in Daniels, A Documentary History of the Revolution)

Some years later the
left communist Miasnikov had this to say about the Democratic Centralism group:

"This group did not
have a platform of any real theoretical value. The only point which attracted
the attention of all the groups and of the party was its struggle against
excessive centralisation. It is only now that one can see in this struggle a
still imprecise attempt of the proletariat to dislodge the bureaucracy from the
positions it had just conquered in the economy. The group died a natural death,
without any violence being used against it..." (L'Ouvrier Communiste, 1929, a French journal close to the KAPD.)

The Decists'
criticisms were inevitably "imprecise" because they were a tendency born at a
time when the Bolshevik party and the revolution were still very much alive, so
that any criticisms of the party were bound to take the form of appeals for the
party to be more democratic, more equitable etc... in other words, to restrict criticisms
to the level of organisational practice rather than of fundamental political
positions.

Many of the
Democratic Centralism group were also involved in the Military Opposition,
which was formed for a brief period in 1919. The requirements of the Civil War
had impelled the Bolsheviks to set up a centralised fighting force, the Red
Army, composed not only of workers but of recruits from the peasantry and other
strata. Very quickly this army began to conform to the hierarchical pattern
that was being established in the rest of the state apparatus. Election of
officers was soon dispensed with as "politically pointless and technically
inexpedient" (Trotsky, ‘Work, Discipline, Order', 1918, quoted in Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, p. 104);
the death penalty for disobedience under fire, saluting and special forms of
address to officers were restored, and differences between ranks solidified,
especially with the appointment of former Tsarist officers to high command
posts in the army.

The Military Opposition,
whose main spokesman was Vladimir Smirnov, was formed to fight against the
tendency to model the Red Army along the lines of a typical bourgeois army.
They did not oppose the establishment of the Red Army as such, nor the use of
military spetsy, but they were
against excessive hierarchy and discipline, and wanted to ensure that the army
was guided by an overall political orientation which did not depart from
Bolshevik principle. The party leadership falsely accused them of wanting to
disband the army in favour of a system of partisan detachments more suited to
peasant warfare; as on many other occasions, the only alternative that the
Bolshevik leadership could see to what they termed "proletarian state
organisation" was petty bourgeois, anarchist decentralisation; in fact very
often the Bolsheviks confused bourgeois forms of hierarchical centralisation
with the self discipline and centralisation produced from below which is the
hall mark of the proletariat. In any case the demands of the Military Opposition
were rejected and the grouping soon fell apart. But the hierarchical structure
of the Red Army - in conjunction with the disbanding of the factory militias -
were to make it more amenable to be used as a repressive force against the proletariat from 1921
onwards.

Despite the
persistence of oppositional tendencies within the party throughout the Civil
War period, the need for unity against the attack of the counter-revolution
tended to act as a cohesive force within the party and among all the classes
and social strata who supported the Soviet regime against the Whites. The
innate tensions within the regime were held down during this period, only to
burst up to the surface when the hostilities ceased and the regime was faced
with the task of reconstructing a ruined country. Dissension over the next step
for the Soviet regime expressed itself in 1920-21 in peasant revolts,
discontent in the navy, workers' strikes in Moscow and Petrograd, to culminate in
the Kronstadt workers' uprising in March 1921. These antagonisms inevitably
expressed themselves within the party itself, and in the traumatic years
1920-21, it fell to the Workers' Opposition group to provide the main focus for
political dissent inside the Bolshevik party.

The Workers' Opposition

The tenth Party
Congress in March 1921was the arena for a controversy within the Bolshevik
party which had been getting sharper and sharper since the end of the Civil
War: the trade union question. On the surface this was a debate about the role
of trade unions under the proletarian dictatorship, but it in fact expressed
far deeper problems about the whole future of the Soviet regime and its
relationship to the working class. Broadly speaking there were three positions
within the party: that of Trotsky, who stood for the total integration of the
unions into the ‘Workers' state' where they would have the task of stimulating
labour productivity; that of Lenin, who argued that the unions still had to act
as defensive organs of the class, which, he pointed out, was actually a
"workers' and peasants' state" which suffered from "bureaucratic deformations";
and finally the position of the Workers' Opposition group who stood for the
management of production by industrial unions independent of the Soviet state.
Although the entire framework of this debate was profoundly inadequate, The
Workers' Opposition expressed in a confused and faltering way the proletariat's
antipathy to the bureaucratic and military methods which had more and more
become the trademark of the regime, and the hope of the class that things would
improve now that the rigours of the Civil War were over.

The leaders of the
Workers' Opposition group came mainly from the trade union apparatus, but it
appears to have had considerable working class support in South Eastern parts
of European Russia and in Moscow, especially among
metal workers - Shliapnikov and Medvedev, two of the groups leading members,
were both metal workers. But the most famous of its leaders was Alexandra
Kollontai, who wrote the programmatic text The
Workers' Opposition as an elaboration on the ‘Theses on the Trade Union
Question' submitted by the group to the Tenth Congress. All the strengths and
weaknesses of the group can be gauged from this text which begins by affirming
that:

"The Workers'
Opposition sprang from the depths of the industrial proletariat of Soviet Russia. It is an outgrowth not only of the unbearable
conditions of life and labour in which seven million industrial workers find
themselves, but it is also a product of vacillations, inconsistencies and
outright deviations of our Soviet policy from the early expressed
class-consistent principles of the Communist programme." (Kollontai, The Workers' Opposition, Solidarity
pamphlet n°7, p. 1).

Kollontai then goes
on to outline the appalling economic conditions facing the Soviet regime after
the Civil War, and draws attention to the growth of a bureaucratic stratum
whose origins lie outside the working class - in the intelligentsia, the
peasantry, remnants of the old bourgeoisie, etc. This strata had more and more
come to dominate the Soviet apparatus and even the party itself, infusing both
with a careerism and a blind disregard for proletarian
interests. For the Workers' Opposition the Soviet state itself was not a pure
proletarian organ but a heterogeneous institution forced to balance between the
different classes and strata in Russian society. They insisted that the way
that the revolution remained loyal to its original goals was not by entrusting
its direction to non-proletarian technocrats and the socially ambiguous organs
of the state, but by relying on the self-activity and creative powers of the
working masses themselves:

"This consideration,
which should be very simple and clear to every practical man, is lost sight of
by our party leaders: it is impossible
to decree Communism. It can be created only in the process of practical
research, through mistakes, perhaps, but only through the creative powers of
the working class itself." (Kollontai, ibid, p. 33).

These general
insights of the Workers' Opposition were very profound in many ways, but the
group was unable to contribute much of lasting value beyond these generalities.
The concrete proposals they put
forward as a solution to the crisis the revolution was passing through were
based on a series of fundamental misconceptions, all of which expressed the
magnitude of the impasse the Russian proletariat faced at this juncture.

For the Workers'
Opposition, the organs which expressed the pure class interests of the
proletariat were none other than the trade unions, or rather the industrial
unions. The task of creating communism should therefore be entrusted to the
unions: "The Workers' Opposition sees in
the unions the mangers and creators of the communist economy..." (Kollontai, ibid,
p. 28).

Thus while the left
communists of Germany, Holland and elsewhere were
denouncing the trade unions as one of the main obstacles to the proletarian
revolution, the left in Russia was extolling them
as potential organs of communist transformation! Revolutionaries in Russia
seemed to have had great difficulty grasping the fact that the trade unions
could no longer have any role to plat for the proletariat in the epoch of
capitalist decadence: although the appearance of factory committees and soviets
in 1917 signified that the unions were dead as organs of working class
struggle, none of the left groupings in Russia really understood this, either
before or after the Workers' Opposition. By 1921, when the Workers' Opposition
was portraying the unions as the backbone of the revolution, the real organs of
revolutionary struggle - the factory committees and the workers' soviets - had
already been emasculated. Indeed in the case of the factory committees, it was
their integration into the unions after 1918 which effectively killed them as
organs of the class. The transfer of decision making power into the hands of
the unions, despite the good intentions of its advocates, would in no way have
restored power to the proletariat in Russia, even if such a
project had been possible, it would simply have been a transfer of power from
one branch of the state to another.

The Workers'
Opposition programme for the regeneration of the party was also flawed at its
roots. They explained the growing opportunism of the party purely in terms of
the influx of a non-proletarian membership. For them the party could be put
back on a proletarian path if an ouvrièrist purge was carried out against
non-worker members. If the party was overwhelmingly composed of ‘pure',
rough-handed proletarians, all would be well. This ‘answer' to the degeneration
of the party completely missed the point. The opportunism of the party was not
a question of its personnel but was a response to the pressure and tensions of
holding state power in an increasingly unfavourable situation. Given the reigns
of state in a period of reflux in the revolution, anyone would became an
‘opportunist', no matter how ‘pure' his proletarian ‘pedigree'. Bordiga once
remarked that ex-workers often became the worst bureaucrats. But the Workers'
Opposition never challenged the notion that the party had to control the state
in order to guarantee that it remained an instrument of the proletariat:

"The Central
Committee of our party must become the supreme directing centre of our class
policy, the organ of class thought and control over the practical policy of the
Soviets, and the spiritual personification of our basic programme." (Kollontai, ibid, p.42).

The Workers'
Opposition's inability to conceive of the dictatorship of the proletariat as
anything else but the dictatorship of the party led them to make frantic
pledges of loyalty to the party when, in the middle of the Tenth Congress, the
Kronstadt revolt broke out. Prominent leaders of the Workers' Opposition even
backed up these pledges by putting themselves in the front line of the assault
on the Kronstadt garrison. Like all the other left fractions in Russia, they completely
failed to understand the importance of the Kronstadt rising as the last mass
struggle of the Russian workers for the restoration of soviet power. But
assisting in the suppression of the revolt did not save the Workers' Opposition
from being condemned as a "petty bourgeois anarchist deviation", as an
"objectively" counter-revolutionary element at the conclusion of the Congress.
The banning of "factions" in the party at the Tenth Congress dealt a stunning
blow to the Workers' Opposition. Faced with the prospect of illegal,
underground work, they proved unable to maintain their opposition to the
regime. A few of its members fought on throughout the twenties in association
with other illegal fractions; others simply capitulated to the status quo.
Kollontai herself ended up as a loyal servant of the Stalinist regime. In 1922
the left communist paper, the Workers' Dreadnought
referred to the "unprincipled and backboneless leaders of the so-called
‘Workers' Opposition'" (Workers'
Dreadnought, July 29, 1922), and certainly there was a real lack of
resolution in the group's programme. This was not a question of the courage or
lack of courage of the group's members, but resulted from the extreme
difficulty Russian revolutionaries faced in trying to oppose or break from a
party which had been the moving spirit of the revolution. For many communists,
to challenge the very premises of the party was sheer folly; outside the party
was nothing but the void. This deep attachment to the party - so deep that it
became a barrier against the defence of revolutionary principles - was to be
even more pronounced in the Left Opposition later on.

Another reason for
the weakness of the Workers' Opposition's criticisms of the regime was their
almost total lack of an international perspective. While the most determined
left fractions in Russia drew their strength from an understanding that the
only true ally of the Russian proletariat and its revolutionary minority was
the world working class, the Workers' Opposition's programme was based on a
search for solutions entirely within the framework of the Russian state.

The central concern
of the Workers' Opposition was this: "Who
shall develop the creative powers in the sphere of economic construction?"
(Kollontai, ibid, p. 4). The
primordial task which she ascribed to the Russian working class was the
construction of a "communist economy" in Russia. Their
preoccupation with the problem of the management of production, with creating
so-called ‘communist relations' of production in Russia show a complete
misunderstanding of a fundamental point: communism could not be built in an
isolated bastion. The main problem facing the Russian working class was the
extension of the world revolution, not the "economic reconstruction" of Russia. Although the
Kollontai text criticises "foreign trade
with the capitalist states... [that is] carried
on over the heads of the Russian as well as the foreign organised workers"
(ibid, p. 10), the Workers' Opposition shared the growing tendency of
the Bolshevik leadership at the time to put the domestic problems of the
Russian economy above the problem of the international extension of the
revolution. That the two tendencies had a different vision of this economic
reconstruction is less important than the fact that they both tended to agree
that Russia could turn in on
itself for an indefinite period without betraying the interests of the world
revolution.

This exclusively
Russian perspective of the Workers' Opposition was also reflected in the
group's failure to establish any firm ties with the left communist opposition
outside Russia. Although
Kollontai's text was smuggled out of Russia by a member of the
KAPD and published both by the KAPD and the Workers'
Dreadnought, Kollontai soon regretted this and tried to get the document
back! The Workers' Opposition offered no real criticisms of the opportunist
policies being adopted by the Communist International, endorsed the 21
Conditions, and did not seek to ally itself with the ‘foreign' oppositions
within the CI, despite the obvious sympathy accorded them by the KAPD and
others. In 1922 they made a last-ditch appeal to the Fourth World Congress of
the CI, but restricted their protest entirely to the bureaucratisation of the
regime and the lack of free expression for dissident communist groupings within
Russia. In any case, they
received scant echo from an International which had already expelled many of
its best elements and was about to endorse the infamous United Front policy.
Shortly after this appeal was made a special Bolshevik commission was set up to
investigate the activities of the Workers' Opposition; it came to the conclusion
that the group consisted an "illegal factional organisation", and the ensuing
repression soon put an end to most of the group's activities.[4]
The Workers' Opposition had the misfortune of being thrust into the political
limelight at a time when the party was going through profound convulsions which
would soon make legal oppositional
activity. In trying to balance between the two stools of legal intra-party
faction work and underground opposition to the regime the Workers' Opposition
fell into the void; henceforward the torch of proletarian resistance would have
to be carried on by more resolute and intransigent fighters.

[1] The
Bolsheviks themselves produced extreme left tendencies in the pre-war period,
notably the so-called ‘Ultamists' and ‘Recallists' who criticised the
parliamentary tactics of the Bolshevik organisation after the 1905 Revolution.
But since this debate took place in the twilight period between capitalism's
ascent and decline, this is not the place to discuss these issues. The
Communist Left is a specific product of the workers' movement in the epoch of
decadence, since it originated in a critique of the ‘official' communist
strategy concerning the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat in the new
epoch.

[2] See
‘Lessons of the German Revolution' in the ICC's International Review n°2.

[3] See
‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution' and ‘The Lessons of Kronstadt' in International Review n°3.

[4] Although
the Workers' Opposition effectively ceased to function after 1922, its name,
like that of the Democratic Centralists, crops up over and over again in
connection with illegal underground activities until the beginning of the
1930s, which implies that elements of both groups fought on till the bitter
end.

Political currents and reference:

Development of proletarian consciousness and organisation:

People:

The ambiguities of the Internationalist Communist Party over the ‘partisans’ in Italy in 1943

1570 reads

Letter from Battaglia Comunista

Dear Comrades,

In the September issue of your paper (Revolution Intenationale, no. 29) we read the following passage:

“To be honest, revolutionaries (‘impotent metaphysicians’ according to the Internationalist Communist Party) aren’t all that surprised to find the Bordigists offering their services to the united front. The ICP was carrying the baggage of anti-fascism with it when it was founded. The first to join its ranks had come out of the Italian ‘Partisans’; it was then joined by people who had been involved in the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, then by elements from the old minority of the Italian Left, which had been in favour of ‘real class struggle’ against Franco. In contrast to all this, the Communist Left in France and Belgium had remained intransigently loyal to the principles of the International Communist Left. During World War II, its appeals were not addressed to ‘sincere’ or ‘proletarian’ anti-fascists, but to the world proletariat, calling upon the class to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, excluding in advance any gesture that could be interpreted as critical support for democracy.”

This passage is from the article ‘Honnetes Propositions d’Hymen Frontiste du PCI’, a polemic against another frontist escapade by Programma Communista (Le Proletaire in France).

We don’t want to go into the details of a polemic which doesn’t concern us and about which we have already clearly expressed our position. What we do want is a full rectification of the grave assertions contained in the above passage, assertions which we don’t hesitate in calling entirely and completely false, though we don’t know whether they derive from lack of knowledge or from an irresponsible political attitude.

It is true that Programma Communista (the Bordigists) have put themselves outside the Partito Communista Internazionalista which in Turin “in 1943 held its first convention, which brought together those same comrades who are once again regurgitating the frontist positions (anti-fascist and trade unionist) which were long ago rejected by the revolutionary Left”. But it is also true that the PCI has continued to be the only force in Italy to defend, in a serious and consequential manner, everything that was best in the Left’s work of drawing the lessons and conclusions from the first revolutionary wave opened by the revolution in Russia and closed inside the IIIrd International. The fact that the ‘Programmists’ lay claim to this patrimony of elaboration and struggle while negating it in their political practice only concerns us because of the confusion that it can engender even amongst the most advanced sectors of the working class.

And the PCI, founded in 1943, and which went through the Turin convention, the Florence Congress in 1948, and the Milan Congress of 1952 didn’t start out with no more than an ‘anti-fascist’ baggage. The comrades who came from the Communist Left and who constituted the party were the first both in Italy and outside it to denounce the counter-revolutionary policies of the democratic bloc (including the Stalinist and Trotskyist parties) and were the first and only ones to act inside the workers’ struggles and even in the ranks of the Partisans, calling on the workers to fight against capitalism no matter what kind of regime it was hiding behind.

The comrades who RI calls ‘Resistance fighters’ were revolutionary militants who engaged in the task of penetrating the ranks of the Partisans in order to disseminate the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movement, and who paid for this work with their lives. Must we remind the comrades of RI about Acquaviva and Atti? Well, these two comrades, despicably assassinated on the order of the Stalinist leaders (the ‘democrats’ of today), were cadres of the PCI. Because of their heroic revolutionary behaviour the PCI was and is still able to put all its cards on the table.

Concerning the comrades who, during the war in Spain, decided to abandon the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left and to throw themselves into an adventure which took them outside class positions: let us remember that the events in Spain, which simply confirmed the positions of the Fraction, taught a lesson to these comrades and allowed them to return to the revolutionary Left. The Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, in the person of Vercesi who thought he had to join the PCI when it was founded, held onto its own bastardized positions until the party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism.

What we are saying here is confirmed by documents which the comrades of RI have at their disposal, but which they don’t seem to have read. The documents of the period show what the politics of the PCI were, and what kind of ‘frontism’ it stood for (the unity of the workers against the war and its fascist and democratic agents). This was very different from the frontism of organizations which the Programmists defend today.

By asking for this rectification, at a time when RI has declared itself in favour of discussion between revolutionaries and of the international initiative of our party, we hope that all revolutionaries will know how to undertake a serious critical examination of the main political problems confronting the working class today; when dealing with the errors of the past – something which is always necessary – it is precisely up to revolutionaries to document their work in the most serious manner. Communist Greetings.

Damen,

for the Executive of the Partito Communista Internazionalista.

The ICC’s Reply

We were a little surprised to receive and read your letter, which to say the least is full of righteous indignation. What exactly is at issue here? The matter has arisen over an article published in Revolution Internationale no. 29 (September), an attack on the Bordigist International Communist Party which showed up the profound opportunism of this organization, especially their more and more pronounced tendency towards frontism. Bordigism, which reconstituted itself into a party at the end of World War II, is a striking example of the degeneration of a current which came from the communist left. This degeneration can be seen in relation to all the questions which have been posed to the workers ‘ movement since the decomposition of the IIIrd International: the function of the party, and the historical context in which parties are formed; the nature and function of trade unions today; the problem of transitional demands; electoralism; national liberation; frontism. On all these questions, Bordigism has moved further and further away from communist positions and is moving closer and closer to Trotskyism. This political regression seems to be the only kind of ‘invariance’ in the evolution of Bordigism, and every genuinely revolutionary group has no alternative but to confront this tendency and wage an implacable battle against it. This is what RI was doing in the offending article.

How is it that these attacks on Bordigism have affected Battaglia Communista and impelled it to write this letter of protest? It seems that the bullet has ricocheted in an unfortunate manner. But who has been caught by the ricochet?

In the first place, a considerable part of the problem is caused by the fact that in Italy today there are at least four groups[1] who call themselves the ICP, all of them deriving from the original party, all of them claiming the same continuity, the same ‘invariance’, the same tradition and the same original platform. Each one argues that it is the only true heir of this platform. It’s certainly a pity that, out of amour propre and a concern for authenticity, these groups all hold onto the same name, because this only leads to confusion. This is something which we can only regret. It should be said at this point that, outside Italy, and especially in France, it is the Bordigist group (Programma Communista) which is known as the ICP; and, whatever Battaglia might think, this isn’t entirely illogical. Although it’s not our job to hand out certificates of legitimacy, it seems to us to be going a bit far to consider that Bordigism is a current which simply ‘ran across’ the Italian Left, as this letter would have us believe. However much it has regressed today, no-one can ignore or deny the fact that, over a period of twenty-five years, Bordigism was totally bound up with what is known as the Italian Left. This is not only true for Bordiga’s abstentionist fraction and its paper Il Soviet in the early twenties; it’s also attested by the fact that the platform presented by the Left at the Lyon Congress of 1926, which led to the Left being expelled from the Communist Party, was expressly entitled Platform of the Left (Bordigist).

In any case, no-one could have any doubts about which group our article was addressed to. There was no room for ambiguity because we took the precaution of writing ‘A Frontist ICP (Programme Communiste)’ in our subtitle. As for the passage you cite and which seems to irritate you so much, we can only say that it is not only our right but politically logical to inquire whether the degeneration of Bordigism is a question of pure chance, or whether we should look for the germs of this degeneration in the past, in the very conditions in which the party was set up. What embarrasses you is that the history of the formation of this party is also your own history. Thus you are trying to minimize the unity of responsibility, the unity which existed at the beginning of the party, by making various distinctions which, according to you, were there from the start:

“It is true that Programma Communista (the Bordigists) have put themselves outside the Partito Communista Internazionalista which in Turin ‘in 1943 held its first convention, which brought together those same comrades’ (…)

… until the party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism.”

In other words: when the ICP was set up, there was us and them. What was good about the party was us, what was bad was them. Even if one was to admit that it was like this, it wouldn’t alter the fact that the ‘bad’ was there, that it was a fundamental element in the constitution of the party, and that at the time no-one raised the slightest criticism of this element. This was because, with everyone rushing together to build the party, no-one took the time to look a bit closer at the people who were taking part in this enterprise and what positions and forms of activity they defended (not to speak of engaging in a serious study of the whole context in which the party was set up). Not seeing or understanding something when it happens might be an explanation, but it can never be a justification, certainly not an a posteriori one. This is why we don’t understand why you are protesting when all we are doing is going over the facts and analyzing their significance.

Battaglia Communista asks us to make “a full rectification of the grave assertions made in the above passage, assertions which we don’t hesitate in calling entirely and completely false”. Rather than making any rectification, we feel obligated to explain what we mean and to elaborate our initial assertions, which are far from being “entirely and completely false” as Battaglia Communista claims. First of all, one thing must be clear: we have never said that the ICP formed in 1943 started out “with no more than an ‘anti-fascist’ baggage”. If that had been our position, we would have said so, and we would follow up the political implications of such a position. We would have purely and simply denounced it, as we do with the Trotskyists. This would be quite different from our attitude of confronting the positions of the party, even though this confrontation is sometimes quite violent. We don’t say that the positions of the ICP were “no more than” anti-fascist. What we do say is that elements were allowed to exist in the party, even in its leadership, who quite openly defended their frontist and anti-fascist experiences. We want to point out that, while affirming some class positions, the ICP allowed all kinds of ambiguities to subsist, whether we are taking about the elements it regrouped with or the formulations it put forward. It was as though it was closing the door while leaving the window half open. It’s no good making us say things we haven’t said; but we do defend everything that we have actually said. We fully endorse what was written in Internationalisme no. 36, July 1948:

“Just as we did after the 1948 Conference, we consider that within the ICP there are a lot of healthy revolutionary militants, and that because of this, this organization cannot be seen as being lost in advance to the proletariat.”

Internationalisme is certainly not talking about a simple anti-fascist group here, but this didn’t alter the “grave assertions” and criticisms which it made concerning the ambiguities and the errors of the ICP, criticisms which were fully vindicated by the subsequent vicissitudes of the party, by all its crises and splits.

These ambiguities and errors can be traced to the very fact that the party was set up in the first place. The party cannot be constituted at any given moment. The Gauche Communiste de France (Internationalisme) was quite right when it made a thorough critique of the formation of the ICP, basing itself on Bilan’s pertinent criticisms of the proclamation of the Trotskyist IVth International. A party set up in a period of reaction, when the working class is defeated, is bound not only to have an artificial and voluntaristic character, but also to contain all kinds of political ambiguities. As far as we know, the ICP (whether or not you alone are its continuatiors) never replied to this criticism; instead, in the excitement of constituting itself, if preferred to ignore this critique with a disdainful silence, while at the same time opening its doors to politically dubious elements.

These ambiguities can be found in the Political Platform of the ICP, published in French in 1946. It hardly needs to be said that, during the war and especially towards the end of the war, the attitudes revolutionaries had towards the war, the partisan resistance, the anti-fascist mystification and other kinds of “liberations” took on a particular importance and demanded the greatest clarity and intransigence. And yet while condemning the Resistance as a whole, the ICP Platform said:

“The effective elements of the clandestine activity which has developed against the fascist regime were and are the informal and spontaneous reaction of proletarian groupings and of a few unselfish intellectuals, as well as being the kind of activity and organization which every state and every army creates and nourishes behind enemy lines.” (ICP, Platform, p. 19, paragraph 7)

The whole of paragraph 7, which deals with the question of the Partisans, is a defence of the idea that this movement had a dual nature – one of proletarian origin, the other emanating from states and armies. And to emphasize its character as an “informal and spontaneous reaction of proletarian groupings”, the Platform even minimizes the importance of the second aspect: “These political big-shots who appeared like flies in the ointment only had a minor influence in this activity.” (Ibid)

Another passage in the same paragraph contains the same ambiguities:

“In reality the network set up by the bourgeois and pseudo-proletarian parties during the period of clandestinity did not at all have as their goal a national-democratic partisan insurrection. What they wanted to do was to create an apparatus capable of immobilizing any revolutionary movement that might arise with the collapse of the fascist and German defences.” (Ibid)

This insistence on distinguishing and showing the opposition between “a national-democratic partisan insurrection” and the attempt at “immobilizing any revolutionary movement” follows on naturally from the original distinction the Platform makes between the dual origins and characteristics of the Partisan movement. And it lead logically to a recognition of the possibility of a sincere, democratic, proletarian anti-fascist movement, in opposition to the false anti-fascism of the bourgeoisie.

This is a thinly-veiled version of the idea that there is a ‘natural’ link between the proletariat and the Partisans. And in another passage, the veil disappears completely:

“These movements (the Partisans), which don’t have a sufficient (sic!) political orientation, still express the tendency of local proletarian groups to organize themselves and to arm themselves in order to seize and maintain control of the situation locally, and thus take power.” (Ibid, p. 2, paragraph 18)

The Partisan movement is no longer denounced for what it is – the mobilization of the workers for imperialist war – but has become a tendency of proletarian groups to take power locally, although it unfortunately doesn’t have sufficient political orientation”.

If this sort of thing can be found in the platform, ie a founding document written with great care by the party’s most responsible members, one can easily imagine the kind of anti-fascist diatribes which appeared in the local press of the PCI, especially in the South which was isolated and cut off from the party centres in the North.[2]

It should come as no surprise that such a definition of the Partisans should lead to a defence of their struggle:

“Concerning the partisan and patriotic struggle against the Germans and the fascists, the party denounces the manoeuvres of the international and national bourgeoisie who, with their propaganda for the rebirth of official state militarism (a propaganda which can have no meaning) (sic), are aiming at the dissolution and liquidation of the voluntary organizations of this struggle. In a number of countries these organizations have already been subject to armed repression.”

We are asked to make “a full rectification of (our) grave assertions”. We are absolutely agreed and convinced that these rectifications are necessary. The only question is: who must rectify what? Is it up to us to rectify a false accusation of anti-fascism? Or is it up to Battaglia to rectify the highly ambiguous postulates and formulations of the ICP Platform?

How could the ICP seek to defend the Partisan organizations from the threat of dissolution by the state? The Partisans were the armed organizations through which the bourgeoisie mobilized the workers behind enemy lines into the imperialist war, in the name of anti-fascism and national liberation. This didn’t seem to be very clear to the ICP, who saw something else in the patriotic, anti-fascist Partisans: a spontaneous reaction of proletarian groupings”. Thus the ICP had an attitude of extreme solicitude towards the Partisans:

“With regard to these tendencies, which constitute an historic reality of the greatest importance, the party affirms that a proletarian tactic demands that the most resolute and combative elements must finally (!) arrive at the political positions and the organizational form which will enable them to at last fight in their own interests, after such a long period of giving their blood in the service of others.” (Ibid)

There can be no doubt about this. The ICP is not talking about workers who have been derailed into a capitalist organization which the proletariat has to destroy, but about a working class organization “an historical reality of the greatest importance”, which doesn’t have “a sufficient political orientation”, which must be defended against the bourgeoisie’s attempts to dissolve it. It is an organization with which one can have a dialogue; it is a fertile soil for the revolution and revolutionaries must enter its ranks in order to bring communist positions to it.

It might appear that our criticism can be answered by the assertion that the militants of the ICP didn’t enter the Partisans in order to do ‘resistance’ work but to “disseminate the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movement”. But revolutionaries don’t make oral or written propaganda by joining a counter-revolutionary organization. This kind of penetration is an ‘entry tactic’ which we don’t subscribe to and which we are happy to leave to the Trotskyists. But this doesn’t explain why the ICP was in favour of penetrating the Partisans, and not, for example, the Socialist or Communist Parties. This would be even closer to the ‘entry’ tactics of the Trotskyists. In any case, these kind of tactics have nothing in common with the revolutionary positions of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. Whether it was the decision of its leader or of the party as a whole, the ICP accepted elements who belonged to the Partisans as ‘cadres of the Party’. This is a rather strange ‘tactic’, one which we can only describe as political collaboration. Let’s not forget that the Partisans were a counter-revolutionary organization of the worst kind, created during the war in order to perpetuate the massacre of the workers. It was a military organization based (just like the SS) on voluntary membership. Because of this it did not provide any suitable context for the dissemination of revolutionary principles and tactics. This is in contrast to the army, since the workers are mobilized into the army by force.[3] The fact that this organ of war had a ‘popular’ and ‘anti-fascist’ façade in no way justified the policy of penetration, of a revolutionary party sending its cadres into its ranks. If the ICP did this, it was because it was itself confused. Consumed by activism, it committed an act of terrible irresponsibility by allowing – or worse still, sending – its militants to join this counter-revolutionary military organization in which all they could do was to get themselves murdered. There’s nothing to boast about in such errors.[4]

We don’t know the details of the circumstances in which comrades Acquaviva and Atti were murdered at the behest of the Stalinists. But their tragic end, far from vindicating your policy of participation, only strengthens us in our convictions. Many Trotskyists in France and elsewhere lost their lives in analogous circumstances; this is no way proves that the policy of participation which they followed was a revolutionary one.

After all this, there can be no doubt that the ICP had all kinds of ambiguities on the question of the anti-fascist resistance from the moment it was set up. This was to weigh heavily on the subsequent evolution of the organization. As a confirmation of what we are saying, we only have to cite Danieli’s intervention at the ICP Congress in Florence (6-9 May, 1948).[5]

“One thing must be clear for everyone: the party has suffered gravely from a facile extension of its political influence – the result of an equally facile activism – on a purely superficial level. I must recount a personal experience which will serve as a warning against the danger of the party exerting a facile influence on certain strata of the masses, which is an automatic consequence of the equally facile theoretical formation of its cadres. In the last months of the war I was a party representative in Turin. The Federation was strong numerically; it had a lot of young, activist elements; it organized many meetings, leaflets, the newspaper, a bulletin, contacts with the factories; there were internal discussions which always had an extremist tone when differences on the question of the war in general and the Partisans in particular came up; there were also contacts with deserters. The position on the war was clear: no participation in the war, refusal of military discipline by elements who called themselves internationalists. One might think therefore that no member of the party would have accepted the directives of the ‘Committee of National Liberation’. Now, on the morning of 25 April (the day Turin was ‘liberated’) the whole Turin Federation was in arms, insisting on participating in the crowning of six years of massacre, and some comrades from the provinces – still under military discipline – came to Turin to take part in the whole thing. As for myself, I should have declared the organization dissolved, but I found a way of compromising and got a resolution passed, in which comrades agreed to participate in the movement as individuals. The party no longer existed; it had liquidated itself.”

This public testament of an old and responsible militant, formed by a long experience with the Italian Fraction in exile, is both eloquent and dramatic. We can see that it wasn’t the party which was penetrating the ranks of the Partisans and disseminating revolutionary tactics and principles; it was the spirit of the Partisans which penetrated the party and corrupted its militants. The party has never engaged in a critical discussion of these questions; for reasons of prestige it has taken refuge in silence on this and other questions. This is why all its initial ambiguities have survived and developed in all the groups it has given rise to.

This ambiguity on the question of the Partisans can be found in all the groups emanating from the original ICP, and not only among the Bordigists (Programma) with their support for national liberation movements in the underdeveloped countries. They can be found, for example, in the International Bulletin published in French in the early sixties as a joint effort of News and Letters, Munis, and Battaglia Communista. An article written by an Italian comrade uses the theory of the ‘special case’ to show that the Partisans in Italy were different from other resistances in other countries, and thus had to be treated in a particular manner. Traces of this ambiguous position can still be found in Battaglia Communista’s present letter, where it talks about acting “inside the workers’ struggle and even in the ranks of the Partisans”.

According to Battaglia’s letter, the comrades of the minority of the Italian Fraction went to Spain and passed “outside class positions”, in contrast to the militants of the ICP who “engaged in the task of penetrating the ranks of the Partisans in order to disseminate the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movement”. But do the comrades of Battaglia Communista think that the militants of the minority went to Spain to defend Republican democracy against fascism? Just like those of the ICP who went into the Partisans, they went to Spain to disseminate in the ranks of the militias “the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movements”, to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism.

Why is it that what the minority did was an “adventure” and what the ICP did was an act of heroism? A simple question, and one that is not answered by the gratuitous assertion that the events in Spain “taught these comrades a lesson and allowed them to return to the revolutionary Left.” The minority excluded from the Fraction in 1936 ended up regrouping with Union Communiste, which defended the same positions, and there they remained until the dispersion of the group during the war. There was no question of these militants going back to the Communist Left until the Fraction was dissolved and its militants integrated into the ICP (at the end of 1945). It was never a question of a ‘lesson’ being learned, or of these militants rejecting their old position and condemning their participation in the anti-fascist war in Spain. It was simply that the euphoria and confusion of setting up the party ‘with Bordiga’ inspired these comrades, including a few French comrades left over from the old Union Communiste, to join the party. And this was done at the direct instigation of Vercesi, who in the meantime had become leader of the party and its representative outside Italy. The party in Italy did not ask these comrades to account for their past activities. This was not because of ignorance – old comrades of the Fraction like Danielis, Lecce, Luciano, Butta, Vercesi and others could hardly be ignorant of a minority which they themselves had expelled nine years before. It was because it was a time to forget ‘old quarrels’: the reconstitution of the party wiped the slate clean. A party which was not very clear about the effect of the Partisan movement on its own militants wasn’t likely to have a very rigorous attitude towards what the minority had been doing some years before. Thus it ‘naturally’ opened its doors to these comrades, quietly making them the nucleus of the French section of the new Party.

If we examine the explanation given in the letter about the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee and Vercesi’s part in it, it doesn’t fare any better. The letter says that “the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, in the person of Vercesi who thought he had to join the Partito Communista Internazionalista when it was founded, held onto his own bastardized positions until the party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism”. What an elegant way of putting it! He – Vercesi - thought he had to join!!!??? And the party – what did the party think of him? Or is the party a bridge club which anyone can join? Vercesi didn’t come out of nowhere. He was an old militant of the Italian Left in the 1920s, and the main spokesman of the Italian Left in exile. He was the guiding spirit of the Fraction and the main editor of Bilan. His militant contribution and his revolutionary merits were enormous, and his influence was considerable. This is why the struggle within the Fraction on the eve of the war and during the war against his increasingly aberrant positions was so important.

The announcement of the formation of an Italian Anti-Fascist Committee in Brussels in the last months of the war, with Vercesi, in the name of the Fraction at its head, provoked a violent response from revolutionary elements and groups in France. Elements of the Italian Fraction who were in France – with the agreement of the French Group of the Communist Left – reacted by expelling Vercesi from the Fraction, a few months before hearing about the constitution of the party in Italy and proclaiming the dissolution of the Fraction. What makes Vercesi’s political conduct even more serious is the fact that he took with him the Italian comrades in Brussels and the majority of the Belgian Fraction. A few months later Vercesi went to Italy where he was given a leading role in the new party and the task of representing it abroad. The party must have known about all these events because not only had a number of the comrades from the recently dissolved Fraction just arrived in Italy, but even more because the French Group of the Communist Left raised the question publicly in its review Internationalisme and addressed a number of letters and open letters to the ICP and the other fractions of the Communist Left, criticizing and condemning all these activities. But apart from the Belgian Fraction, there was no reply. The ICP shut itself up in silence, and its only response was to recognize as its sole expression in France the Fraction recently set up by Vercesi around the old minority, thus keeping away from Internationalisme and its embarrassing questions. We had to wait until 1948 for the party to break its silence, passing a brief and laconic resolution against the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee without mentioning by name the man who remained one of its leaders: Vercesi. This policy of silence is one of holding onto ambiguities. And it took another five years for the party to make “the sacrifices that clarity demanded, (and) rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism”.

We don’t want to write a history of the ICP here. If we have dwelt at length on the Platform and the question of the Partisans, it’s because this was the crucial question at the time. We didn’t spend a long time discussing the question of the integration of the minority of the Fraction who had fought in Spain, or the issue of the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, even though the political implications of these questions are of the greatest importance. This is because what we were interested in doing was not making ad hoc condemnations, but simply corroborating what we said originally about the ICP: that the very basis on which it was set up contained all kinds of ambiguities which meant that the party was a political regression in relation to the positions of the Fraction before the war, the positions of Bilan. While remaining within the proletarian camp in a general sense, the ICP failed to break away from the erroneous positions of the Communist International, for the example on the union question and the question of participating in electoral campaigns. The subsequent evolution of the ICP and its dislocation into a number of groups are proof of its failure. The contribution of the Italian Left is considerable, and its theoretical and political work is part of the heritage of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. But, as with the German and Dutch Left, the traditional Italian left exhausted itself a long time ago. This is simply an expression of the break in organic continuity in the revolutionary movement. The terrible length and depth of the counter-revolution physically destroyed all that was left of the Communist International. The Fraction wanted to be a bridge between yesterday’s party and the party of the future. But this hope was not realized. The ICP attempted to be the pole of a new revolutionary movement. But the period, plus its own insufficiencies and ambiguities, didn’t allow this either. It failed and today looks more like a survival of the past than a new point of departure.[6]

With the re-emergence of the historic crisis of the capitalist system, and the resurgence of workers’ struggles all over the world, new revolutionary groups are bound to arise, expressing the necessity and possibility of the regroupment of revolutionaries. It’s time to stop claiming a vague and dubious organic continuity, it’s time to stop giving it artificial respiration. What we have to do is apply ourselves seriously to the task of regroupment, to create a pole of revolutionary regroupment. That is the task of the hour.

But if such a regroupment is to fulfill its real function, it must be based on precise political criteria, on a clear and coherent orientation, which springs from the experiences of the workers’ movement and its theoretical principles. This is something that has to be sought after as methodically and as seriously as possible. We must, as Danielis said, guard against a facile attitude, such as convening conferences on the vague basis of denouncing this or that about-turn of the ‘Communist’ parties in Europe. This would be chasing after numbers at the expense of examining the political criteria for a solid revolutionary regroupment. Here again, the experience of the formation of the ICP has an important lesson for us.

Because it is firmly committed to the necessity of contact and regroupment in the revolutionary movement, the ICC will encourage and actively participate in any initiative in this direction. This is why we have responded positively to Battaglia’s suggestion for an international conference of revolutionary groups, even though we have criticized its lack of political criteria which has allowed invitations to be sent to the modernist Trotskyists of Union Ouvriere and Maoist-Trotskyists like Combat Communiste, who have no place in a conference of communists.

We have been asked to make a “rectification”. This is what we have done – a bit long perhaps, but clear enough we hope. Precisely because we are more than ever convinced of the necessity for discussion between groups who defend communist positions, we think that this discussion can only be fruitful when it aims at the highest degree of clarity about political positions, both in the present and in the past. Until we next hear from you.

Communist Greetings,

The International Communist Current

30.11.76

[1]At the moment there are two groups calling themselves Partito Communista Internazionalista (their respective papers being Battaglia Communista and La Rivoluzione Communista) and two groups calling themselves Partito Communista Internazionale (their publications are Programma Communista and Il Partito Communista). There are many other groups who derive from the original ICP: Lotta Communista, Iniziativa Communista, etc.

[2]We know about these papers, but we can’t cite any passages from them as we don’t have any available. The ICP could of course republish them … ?

[3]The Partisans were set up under the direct control of the Allies and locally under the control of the Communist and Socialist Parties.

[4]In general, we aren’t very keen on the bragging tone of the assertion that the comrades who set up the ICP were “the first and only ones to act inside the workers’ struggles and even in the ranks of the Partisans, calling on the workers to fight against capitalism no matter what kind of regime it was hiding behind.” First of all its not hard to be the ‘first’, when you are the ‘only’ one. There were other groups like the American and Dutch council communists, the RKD (Revolutionary Communists of Germany), the Communistes Revolutionaires de France, etc who defended class positions against capitalism and against the war. Thirdly, if we are talking about participation in the ranks of the Partisans, the part of the Italian Left which followed this policy certainly didn’t suffer from isolation, being in good company with all sorts of groups, from Trotskyists to anarchists.

[5]Danielis was an active militant of the Italian Fraction and returned to Italy on the eve of the war.

[6]We only have to recall the total absence of the different groups who come from the ICP during the struggles at FIAT and Pirelli during Italy’s Hot Autumn of 1969; they were taken completely by surprise by these events. Not to mention the ridiculous appeal issued by the Bordigists in May 1968 in France, in the form of a small handwritten poster stuck to the walls of the university, calling upon the twelve million workers on strike to put themselves behind the banner of the Party … .

Rubric:

Internationalist Communist Party

International Review no.9 - 2nd quarter 1977

3425 reads

The Communist Left in Russia 1918-1930 Part 2

3912 reads

The
communist left and the counter-revolution, 1921-30

After
1921 the Bolshevik Party found itself in a nightmarish situation.
Following the defeat of workers’ uprisings in Hungary, Italy,
Germany and elsewhere between 1918 and 1921, the world revolution
went into a profound reflux from which it was never to recover,
despite sending out after-shocks like Germany and Bulgaria in 1923
and China in 1927. In Russia both the economy and the proletariat
itself had reached a level of near disintegration; the working masses
had withdrawn or been chased from political life. No longer an
instrument in the hands of the proletariat, the Soviet state had
effectively degenerated into a machine for the defence of capitalist
‘order’. Prison­ers of their substitutionist conceptions, the
Bolsheviks still believed that it was possible to administer this
state machine and the capitalist economy while waiting for and even
assisting the resurgence of the world revolution. In reality, the
neces­sities of state power were transforming the Bolsheviks into
overt agents of the counter­revolution, both at home and abroad.
Inside Russia they became the overseers of an increasingly ferocious
exploitation of the working class. Although the NEP brought with it a
certain relaxation in the state’s economic domination, especially
over the peasants, it did not see any let up in the party’s
dictatorship over the proletariat. On the contrary, since the
Bolsheviks still considered that the main danger of the
counter-revolution within Russia came from the peasants, they
concluded that the econo­mic concessions given to the peasants
had to be counter-balanced by a strengthening
of the political
domination
of Russian soci­ety by the Bolshevik Party; and this brought with
it a reinforcement of tendencies towards monolithism in the party
itself. This ‘tightening up’ of control by the party, and within
the party, was seen as the only way of erecting a proletarian dam
against a flood-tide of peasant capitalism.

Internationally,
the requirements of the Russian state were, through the medium of the
dominant Russian party, having a more and more pernicious effect on
the policies of the Communist International: the United Front, the
workers’ government -- reactionary ‘tactics’ such as these were
to a large ex­tent the expression of the need for the Russian
state to find bourgeois allies in the capitalist world.

Although
the Bolshevik Party had not yet definitively abandoned the
proletarian revolution, the whole logic of the situation it was in
more and more pushed the party into a final and complete
identification with the demands of Russian national capital. Lenin’s
last writings show an obsessive concern with the problems of
‘socialist construction’ in backward Russia. The victory of
Stalinism merely made this logic explicit, eliminating the dilemma
between internationalism and Russian state interests by simply
abandoning the former in favour of the latter.

The
events of the last fifty years have shown that a proletarian party
cannot
sur­vive in a period of reflux or defeat in the class struggle.
Thus, the only way that the communist parties could preserve their
physical existence after the failure of the revolutionary wave was to
pass lock, stock and barrel into the camp of the bourgeoisie. In
Russia the tendency towards degeneration was further accelerated by
the fact that the party had fused with the state and thus had to
adapt itself even more quickly to the demands of national capital. In
a per­iod of defeat, the defence of revolutionary positions can
only be carried on by small communist fractions
who
detach themselves from the degenerating party or survive its demise.
This phenomenon took place in Russia, mainly between 1921 and 1924,
with the emergence of small groupings determined to defend communist
positions against the betrayals of the party. As we have seen, the
emergence of oppositional tendencies within the Bolshevik Party was
not new, but the conditions in which these fractions had to operate
after 1921 differed dramatically from those under which their
predecessors had worked.

The
precondition for defending a communist perspective against the
advancing counter­revolution was, especially in Russia, the
ability to place loyalty to those perspec­tives above all
sentimental, personal, and political attachments to the original
organ­izations of the class, now that the latter had embarked
upon a path of class betrayal. And, indeed, this was the great
achievement of the Russian left fractions; their defiant commitment
to carry out communist work against
the party and against
the
Soviet state as soon as such work could no longer be carried on
within those institutions.

For
the left, communist positions came first. If the ‘heroes’ of the
revolution no longer defended the communist programme, then those
heroes had to be denounced and left behind. It is not surprising that
the Russian left communists tended to be made up of relatively
obscure individuals, main­ly workers, who had not been part of
the Bolshevik leadership during the heroic years. (Miasnikov even
used to deride the Left Opposition as being nothing but an
“opposition
of celebrities”
who only oppo­sed the Stalinist faction for their bureau­cratic
reasons -- see L’Ouvrier
Communiste,no.
6, January 1930). These revolutionary workers were able to understand
the condi­tions facing the Russian proletariat much more easily
than high-ranking Bolshevik officials who had really lost touch with
the class and were only capable of seeing the problems of the
revolution in terms of state administration. At the same time,
however, the obscure origins of the left fractions’ members were
often a factor of weakness in these groups. Their analyses tended to
be based more on a raw class instinct than on a profound theoretical
formation. Coupled with the historic weak­nesses of the Russian
workers’ movement, which we have already mentioned, and the
isolation of the Russian left from communist fractions outside
Russia, these factors placed serious limits on the theoretical
evolution of left communism in Russia.

Despite
the left’s ability to break from ‘official’ institutions and to
identify with the struggle of the class against them, the immense
retreat of the class in Russia posed the left fractions with a series
of opaque and contradictory problems. Despite its rapid degeneration
after 1921, the Bolshevik Party remained the focus of pro­letarian
life in Russia since the soviets, factory committees and other mass
organs of the class were dead, and the state itself had become an
organ of capital. Because of the apathy and indifference of the
class, political debate and conflict were centred almost exclusively
around the party. It is true that the very indifference and
non-activity of the class made most of the ideo­logical debates
within the party in the twenties sterile from the beginning, but the
fact that the party was a kind of oasis of political thought in a
desert of working class apoliticism could not be ignored by
revolutionaries.

This
situation placed the left fractions in a horrible dilemma. On the one
hand the apathy of the masses, together with the rep­ressive
actions of the state, made it extr­emely difficult to militate
within the pro­letariat ‘in general’. On the other hand, any
work towards the party was severely hampered by the banning of
factions in 1921 and the increasingly stifling atmosphere within the
party; it was almost impossible for any genuinely oppositional group
to do legal work within the party. Even the rel­atively mild
criticisms voiced in 1923 by the Platform
of the Forty-Six (the
founding document of the Left Opposition) contained the complaint
that “free
discussion within the party has in fact disappeared; the party’s
social mind has been choked off”.
For the tendencies to the left of the Left Opposition, the situation
was even worse; and yet all of them continued to combine propaganda
work among the ‘broad masses’ of the factories with secret work
within the local party cells. The Workers’ Group in its 1923
Manifesto
spoke
of the “neces­sity
to constitute the Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolshevik) on the basis of the programme and statutes of the RCP, in
order to exert a decisive pressure on the leading group of the party
itself.”
The Workers’ Truth group’s 1922 Appeal
expressed
the view that “everywhere in the mills and factories, in the trade
union organizations, the workers’ faculties, the Soviet and party
schools, the Communist Union of Youth, and the party organizations,
propaganda circles must be created in soli­darity with the
Workers’
Truth.”1
Such declarations of intent demonstrate the extreme difficulty facing
these groups in their efforts to find an echo in the Russian
proletariat and the impossibility of their finding clear-cut
organizational solutions in a period of disarray and confusion.

Finally,
we must bear in mind the fact that these groupings were subject to
the most intense persecution and repression at the hands of the
party-state. Precisely because Russia had been the ‘land of the
Soviets’, the country of the proletarian revolution, the
counter-revolution there had to be total, ruthless and implacable,
burying the last traces of everything that had been revolu­tionary.
Even before the victory of the Stalinist faction, the left groupings
had been subject to investigation by the GPU, arrest, imprisonment
and exile. Deprived of funds and equipment, constantly on the run
from the secret police, it was difficult for them to carry out even a
bare minimum of political propaganda. The solidification of the
counter-revolution after 1924 made things even harder. And yet
throughout these dark years of reaction the left commu­nists
continued to fight for the revolution. As late as 1929 the Workers’
Group was pub­lishing an illegal paper in Moscow, The
Workers’ Road to Power.
Even in the Stali­nist labour camps their political voices were
not silenced. A proletarian revolution does not die easily. The
revolutionaries who fought on in such adverse circumstances derived
their courage and their tenacious­ness from the simple fact that
they had been born out of a revolution of the working class. Let us
therefore examine in more detail the principal groupings who kept the
flag of the communist revolution flying in spite of everything that
was piled up against them.

1.
The Workers’ Truth

The
Workers’ Truth group was formed in the autumn of 1921. It appears
to have been composed mainly of intellectuals, and to have grown out
of the ‘Proletkult’ cultural milieu whose main animator was
Bogdanov - a party theorist who had clashed with Lenin over
philosophical problems in the 1900s and who had been prominent in the
‘left’ tendencies in Bolshevism at that time. In its 1922 Appeal,
Workers’ Truth characteri­zed the NEP, “the
rebirth of normal capita­list relations”,
as signifying a profound defeat for the Russian proletariat:

“The
working class of Russia is disorgan­ized; confusion reigns in the
minds of the workers; are they in a country of the ‘dictatorship of
the proletariat’, as the Communist Party untiringly reite­rates
by word of mouth and in the press? Or are they in a country of
arbitrary rule and exploitation, as life tells them at every step.
The working class is leading a miserable existence at a time when the
new bourgeoisie (ie the responsible functionaries, plant directors,
heads of trusts, chairmen of execu­tive committees,
etc)
and the Nepmen live in luxury and recall in our memory the picture of
the life of the bourgeoisie of all times.”

For
the Workers’ Truth the ‘Soviet’ state has become “the
representative of the nation­wide interests of capital ... the
mere dir­ecting apparatus of political administra­tion and
economic regulation by the organizer intelligentsia.”
At the same time the working class had been deprived of its defensive
organs, the unions, and of its class party. In a manifesto issued to
the Twelfth Party Congress of 1923, Workers’ Truth charged the
unions with:

“converting
themselves from organizations to defend the economic interests of the
workers into organizations to defend the interests of production, ie
of state capital first and foremost.”
(Quoted in E.H. Carr, The
Interregnum.)

As
for the party, the Appeal
asserts
that: “The
Russian-Communist
Party has become the party of the organizer intelligent­sia. The
abyss between the Russian
Communist
Party and the working class is getting deeper and deeper
...”

They
therefore declared their intention of working towards the formation
of a real “party
of the Russian proletariat”,
though they admit that their work will be “long
and persistent, and first of all ideologi­cal”.

Although
the relatively modest aims of the Workers’ Truth group appear to
express some understanding of the defeat the class had suffered and
of the consequent limitations on revolutionary activity in such a
period, their whole framework is vitiated by a peculiar ambiguity
about the historic
epoch
and the tasks confronting the class globally. Perhaps basing
themselves on Bogdanov’s idea that until the proletariat has
matured into a capable organizing class, socialist revolution would
be premature, they imply that the revolution in Russia had had the
task of opening up a phase of capitalist
development:

“After
the successful revolution and civil war, broad perspectives opened
be­fore Russia, of rapid transformation into a country of
progressive capitalism. In this lies the undoubted and tremendous
achievement of the revolution in October.”
(Appeal)

This
perspective also led the Workers’ Truth group to advocate a strange
foreign policy for Russia, calling for rapproche­ment with
‘progressive’ capitalism in America and Germany against
‘reactionary’ France. At the same time the group seems to have
had little or no contact with left communist groups outside Russia.

It
was positions such as these which no doubt led the Workers’ Group
of Miasnikov to proclaim that it had “nothing
in common with the so-called ‘Workers’ Truth’ which attempts to
wipe out everything that was communist in the revolution of October
1917 and is, therefore, completely Menshevist”
(Workers’
Dreadnought,
31 May 1924) -- though in its 1923 Manifesto
the
Workers’ Group acknowledges that groups like the Workers’ Truth,
Democratic Centralism and the Workers’ Opposition contain many
honest proletarian elements and calls on them to regroup on the basis
of the Workers’ Group’s Manifesto.

At
the time of the Russian Revolution those who talked about the
‘inevitability’ of a bourgeois evolution for Russia tended to be
identified as Mensheviks. But in the light of subsequent experience,
we prefer to com­pare the positions of the Workers’ Truth group
to the analysis arrived at by the German and Dutch left in the 1930s.
Like the Workers’ Truth, the latter began with some perceptive
insights into the nature of state capitalism, but undermined their
anal­ysis by concluding that the Russian Revolu­tion had from
the beginning been an affair of the intelligentsia carrying out the
organization of state capitalism in a coun­try which had been
unripe for communist revolution. In other words, the analysis put
forward by Workers’ Truth is that of a revolutionary tendency
demoralized and confused by the defeat of the revolution and thus led
to call into question the orig­inal proletarian character of that
revolu­tion. In the absence of a clear and coher­ent
framework in which to analyze the degeneration of the revolution,
such devia­tions are inevitable particularly in the adverse
conditions in which revolutionaries in Russia found themselves after
1921.

But
despite a certain pessimism and intell­ectualism, the Workers’
Truth group did not hesitate to intervene in the wildcat strikes
which swept across Russia in the summer of 1923, attempting to raise
political slogans within the general class movement. This
intervention, however, brought the full force of the GPU down on the
group and its back was broken quite quickly in the repression that
followed.

2.
The Workers’ Group and the Communist Workers’ Party

We
have seen that many of the weaknesses of groups like the Workers’
Opposition and Workers’ Truth can be traced to their lack of an
international perspective. As a coro­llary to this we can say
that the most impor­tant of the left communist fractions in
Russia were precisely those who emphasized the international
nature
of the revolution and the need for revolutionaries of the whole world
to join together. This was the case with the elements in Russia who
corres­ponded most closely to the German KAPD and its fraternal
organizations.

On
3 June and 17 June 1922, the Workers’
Dreadnought published
a statement by a recently formed group calling itself the “Group
of Revolutionary Left Communists (Communist Workers’ Party) of
Russia”.
They announced themselves as a group that had left “the
social democratic Russian Commu­nist Party which has made
business its chief concern”
(WD,
3 June); and although they pledged themselves to “support
all that is left of revolutionary tendencies in the Russian Communist
Party”
and to “welcome
and support all the demands and propositions of the Workers’
Opposition which point in a sound revolutionary direction”,
they insisted that “there
is no possibility of reforming the Russian Communist Party from
within. In any case the Workers’ Opposition is not capable of doing
it.”
(WD,
17 June). The group denounced the efforts of the Bolsheviks and the
Comintern to compromise with capi­tal both in Russia and abroad,
and in parti­cular attacked the Comintern’s United Front policy
as a means for the “reconstruction
of the capitalist world economy”
(WD,
17 June). Since the Bolsheviks and the Comin­tern were taking an
opportunist course which could only lead to their integration into
capitalism, the group affirmed that the time had come to work for a
Communist Workers’ Party of Russia aligned to the KAPD of Germany,
the Dutch KAP, and other parties
of the Communist Workers’ International.2

The
subsequent development of this group is obscure, but it seems to have
been closely bound up with the better known Workers’ Group (also
known as the Communist Workers’ Group) of Miasnikov -- in fact the
Russian ‘CWP’ of 1922 seems to be a precursor of the latter. On 1
December 1923 the Dread­nought
announced
that it had been sent a copy of the Workers’ Group’s Manifesto
by
the CWP, along with a protest by the CWP against the imprisonment in
Russia of Miasnikov, Kuznetzov, and other militants of the Workers’
Group. In 1924 the KAPD published the Manifesto
in
Germany and described the Workers’ Group as the “Russian
section of the IVth International”.
In any case, the defence of left communism as exemplified by the KAPD
was henceforward to be carried on in Russia by the Miasnikov group.

Gabriel
Miasnikov, a worker from the Urals, had leapt to prominence in the
Bolshevik Party in 1921 when, immediately after the crucial Tenth
Congress, he had called for “freedom
of the press from monarchists to anarchists inclusive”
(quoted in Carr, The
Interregnum).
Despite Lenin’s attempts to dissuade him from this agitation, he
refused to climb down and was expelled from the party in early 1922.
In February-March 1923 he joined with other militants to found the
Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), and they
published their Manifesto,
which was distributed at the Twelfth Congress of the RCP. The group
began to do illegal work amongst party and non-party workers, and
seems to have had an important presence in the strike wave of summer
1923, calling for mass demonstrations and trying to politicize an
essentially defensive class movement. Their activities in these
strikes were enough to convince the GPU that they were a real threat;
a wave of arrests of their leading militants dealt a severe blow to
the group. But as we have seen, they carried on their underground
work, if on a reduced scale, until the beginning of the 1930s.3

The
Workers’ Group’s Manifesto
is a consid­erable advance on the Appeal
of
the Workers’ Truth, but it still shows the hesitations and
half-formed ideas of the communist left, especially in Russia, in
that period.

The
Manifesto
contains
the usual denuncia­tions of the dreadful material conditions
being suffered by the Russian workers and of the inequalities that
accompany the NEP, and asks “is
it in reality possible that the Nep (new economic policy) is changing
into the NEP - the New Exploitation of the Prole­tariat?”.
It goes on to attack the suppres­sion of dissent inside and
outside the party, and the danger of the party being transfor­med
into “a
minority, wielding control of power and of the country’s economic
resour­ces, which will end up as a bureaucratic caste”.
It argues that the unions, soviets and factory committees have lost
their func­tion as proletarian organs, so that the class has no
control either of production or the political apparatus of the
regime. And it calls for a regeneration of all these organs, a
radical reform of the Soviet system which will enable the class to
exert its domina­tion over economic and political life.

This
immediately brings us to the major problem which faced the Russian
left in the early twenties. What attitude should they take up to the
Soviet regime? Did the re­gime still have any proletarian
character, or should revolutionaries call for its out and out
destruction? The trouble was that during those years there simply was
neither the experience nor the established criteria for deciding
whether or not the regime had become completely
counter-revolutionary. This dilemma is reflected in the ambiguous
attitude the Workers’ Group took up towards the regime. Thus it
attacks the inequali­ties of the NEP and the danger of its
“bureaucratic
degeneration”
while at the same time asserting that “the
NEP is the direct result of the situation of the prod­uctive
forces of our country. It must be used to consolidate the positions
conquered by the proletariat in October.”4
The Manifesto
thus
puts forward a series of suggestions for ‘improving’ the NEP –
workers’ control, non-dependence on foreign capital etc. Similarly,
while criticizing the degeneration of the party, the Workers’
Group, as we have seen, opted for work among party members and for
putting pressure on the party leadership. And although else­where
the group posed the question whether the proletariat might not be
“compelled
to once again start anew the struggle -- and perhaps a bloody one --
for the overthrow of the oligarchy”
(quoted in Carr, The
interre­gnum),
the main emphasis of the Manifesto
is on the regeneration
of
the Soviet state and its institutions, not on their violent
overthrow. The position of ‘critical sup­port’ is further
underlined by the fact, that, in the face of the war threat posed by
the Curzon Ultimatum of 1923, the members of the Workers’ Group are
reported to have taken an oath to resist “all
attempts to overthrow the Soviet power”
(Carr, Ibid).
Whether or not it was ‘correct’ to defend the Russian regime in
1923 is not really the point. The positions the Workers’ Group took
up then certainly did not make it counter-revolutionary, because the
exper­ience of the class had not yet definitively settled the
Russian question. Its ambigui­ties about the nature of the
Russian regime are above all testimony to the immense dif­ficulties
this question posed to revolution­aries in the confusion and
disarray of those years.

But
the most important aspect of the Workers’ Group was not its
analysis of the Russian regime but it’s intransigently
internationa­list perspective. Significantly, the 1923 Manifesto
begins
with a powerful description of the world crisis of capitalism and
posed the choice facing mankind as a whole: socialism or barbarism.
In attempting to explain the delay in the working class arriving at a
revolutionary consciousness in the face of this crisis, the Manifesto
mounts a marvelous attack on the universally counter-revolutionary
role of Social Democracy:

“The
Socialists of all countries, are at any given moment the only
saviours of the bourgeoisie from the proletarian revolu­tion,
because the working masses are accustomed to be suspicious of
everything which comes from their oppressors, but when the same
things are described as being in its interests and are adorned with
socialist phrases, then the worker who is misled by these phrases
believes the traitors and expends his energies in a hopeless
struggle. The bourgeoisie has, and will have, no better advocate.”

This
understanding allows the Workers’ Group to make a series of bitter
denuncia­tions of the Comintern’s tactics of the United Front
and the Workers’ government as so many ways of tying the
proletariat to its class enemies. Though less aware of the
reactionary role of the unions, the Workers’ Group shared the
KAPD’s perception that in the new epoch of capitalist decay all the
old reformist tactics had to be jettisoned:

“The
time when the working class could improve their material and legal
position by strikes and entrance into Parliament is now irrevocably
past. It must be said openly. The struggle for the most immed­iate
objectives is a struggle for power. We must drive home by our
propaganda that, though we have called for strikes in various cases,
these cannot really improve the workers’ conditions. But you,
workers, have not yet overcome the old reformist illusions and are
carrying on a fight which only exhausts you. We are in solidarity
with you in your strikes, but we always insist that these movements
will not liberate you from slavery, expl­oitation and hopeless
poverty. The only road to victory is the conquest of power by your
own rough hands.”

The
role of the party, then, is to prepare the masses everywhere for
civil war against the bourgeoisie.

The
Workers’ Groups understanding of the new historic epoch appears to
contain all the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the KAPD’s
idea of the “death crisis of capital­ism”. For both, once
capitalism had entered into its final crisis, the conditions for a
proletarian revolution exist at any time: the role of the party is
thus one of detona­ting the class into a revolutionary
explos­ion. Nowhere in the Manifesto
is
there any understanding of the reflux
of
the world revolution that has taken place, requiring a careful
analysis of the new perspectives open to revolutionaries. For the
Workers’ Group in 1923, world revolution was just as much on the
agenda as it had been in 1917. Thus it could share the KAPD’s
illusions in the possibility of building a IVth Interna­tional in
1922, and as late as 1928-31 Miasnikov was still trying to organize a
Communist Workers’ Party for Russia.5
It appears that only the Italian Left was able to develop an
appreciation of the role of the communist fraction
in
a period of reflux, when the party can no longer exist. For the KAPD,
the Workers’
Dreadnought,
Miasnikov and others, the party could exist at any time. The
corollary to this immediatist view was an inexorable tendency towards
political disintegration: even allowing for the effects of
repression, the German left communists, like their Russian and
English sympathizers, found it almost impossible to sustain their
political existence during the period of counter-revolution.

The
concrete proposals advanced by the Wor­kers’ Group concerning
the international regroupment of revolutionaries show a healthy
concern for the maximum possible unity of revolutionary forces, but
they also reflect the same dilemmas about the relationship of the
communist left to the degenerating ‘offical’ communist
institutions which we have noted elsewhere. Thus while fiercely
opposing any United Front with the Social Democrats, the Workers’
Group’s Manifesto
calls for a kind of united front of all genuine revolutionary
elements, among whom it included the parties of the IIIrd
Inter­national as well as the Communist Workers’ Parties. On
another occasion the Workers’ Group is reported to have entered
into neg­otiations with the KPD left around Maslow in an attempt
to draw Maslow into its aborted ‘foreign bureau’. The KAPD in its
comments on the Manifesto
was
extremely critical of what it called the Workers’ Group’s
“illu­sion
that you can revolutionize the Commu­nist International….the
IIIrd Internatio­nal is no longer an instrument of proletarian
class struggle. This is why the Commu­nist Workers’ Parties
have founded the Communist Workers’ International.”
However the Workers’ Group’s dilemma about the nature of the
Russian regime and of the Comin­tern was to be resolved in the
light of practical experience. The victory of Stal­inism in
Russia led it to take a more intran­sigent line against the
bureaucracy and its state, while the rapid decomposition of the
Comintern after 1923 made it inevitable that the future international
‘partners’ of the Workers’ Group would be the genuine left
communists of different countries. It was first and foremost this
‘international connection’ with the survivors of the
rev­olutionary wave which allowed revolutiona­ries like
Miasnikov to attain a relatively high level of clarity in the sea of
confu­sion, demoralization and dupery which had engulfed the
Russian workers’ movement.

3.
The ‘irreconcilables’ of the Left Opposition

We
cannot go into the whole question of the Left Opposition here.
Although their confu­sed defence of party democracy, of the
Chinese Revolution, and of internationalism against the Stalinist
theory of ‘socialism in one country’ demonstrate that the Left
Opposition was a proletarian
current,
in fact the last spark of resistance in the Bolshevik Party and the
Comintern, the inade­quacy
of
their critique of the advancing counter-revolution makes it
impossible to consider the Left Opposition, as a body,
part of the revolutionary tradition of the communist left. On the
international level, their refusal to question the Theses of the
first four Congresses of the Comintern pre­vented them from
avoiding a pathetic repeti­tion of all its errors. Within Russia,
the Left Opposition failed to make the necessary break with the
party-state apparatus, a break which could have placed them firmly on
the terrain of the proletarian struggle against the regime, alongside
the genuine left communist fractions. Although his enemies tried to
implicate Trotsky for entering into relations with illegal groupings
like the Workers’ Truth, Trotsky him­self explicitly
dissociated himself from these groupings. He referred to the Workers’
Truth group as the “Workers’
Untruth”
(Carr, The
Interregnum)
and himself participated in the repression of the ‘ultra-left’,
for example by assisting in the commission which investigated the
activities of the Workers’ Opposition in 1922. All that Trotsky
would admit was that the groups were symptoms of a genuine
degeneration in the Soviet regime.

But
the Left Opposition in its early years was not simply Trotsky. Many
of the signa­tories of the Platform
of the Forty-Six
were former left communists and Democratic Centralists like Ossinski,
Smirnov, Piatakov, and others. And as Miasnikov said:

“There
are not only great men in the Trotskyist opposition. There are also
many workers. And these will not want to follow the leaders; after
some hesita­tions, they will enter the ranks of the Workers’
Group.”
(L’Ouvrier
Communiste,
no . 6, January 1930)

Precisely
because the Left Opposition was
a proletarian current, it naturally gave birth to a left wing which
went far beyond the timid criticisms of Stalinism made by Trotsky and
his ‘orthodox’ followers. To­wards the end of the twenties a
current known as the ‘irreconcilables’ grew up with­in the
Left Opposition, composed largely of young workers who opposed the
tendency of the ‘moderate’ Trotskyists to move to­wards some
kind of reconciliation with the Stalin faction, a tendency which
accelera­ted after 1928 when Stalin appeared to be rapidly
carrying out the Left Opposition’s programme of industrialization.
Isaac Deutscher writes that among the irreconci­lables:

“ ...
the view was already becoming axio­matic that the Soviet Union
was no longer a workers’ state; that the party had betrayed the
revolution; and that the hope to reform it being futile, the
Oppo­sition should constitute itself into a new party and preach
and prepare a new revolution. Some saw Stalin as the pro­moter of
agrarian capitalism or even, the leader of a ‘kulak democracy’
while to others his rule epitomized the ascen­dancy of a state
capitalism implacably hostile to socialism.” (The
Prophet Outcast)

In
his book Au
Pays du Grand Mensonge,
Anton Ciliga gives an eye-witness account of the debates within the
Left Opposition that took place inside Stalin’s labour camps. He
shows that some Left Opposition­ists stood for capitulating to
the Stali­nist system, others stood for reforming it, and still
others for a ‘political revolution’ to remove the bureaucracy
(the position Trotsky himself was to adopt). But the irreconcilables
or “negators”
as he calls them (Ciliga himself was one):

“ ...
believed that not only the political order but also the social and
economic orders were foreign and hostile to the proletariat. We
therefore envisaged not only a political but also a social
revo­lution that should open up a road to the development of
socialism. According to us, the bureaucracy was a real class, a class
hostile to the proletariat.” (Reproduced in ‘Revolutionary
Politics in Stalin’s Prisons’, an Oppositionist
pamphlet.)

In
January 1930, writing in L’Ouvrier
Communiste
(no.6) Miasnikov wrote of the Left Opposition that:

“There
are only two possibilities. Either the Trotskyists regroup under the
slogan
‘war on the palaces, peace to the cottages’, under the banner of
the work­ers’ revolution, the first step of which must be the
proletariat becoming the ru­ling class, or they will languish
slowly and pass individually or collectively into the camp of the
bourgeoisie. These are the only two alternatives. There is no third
way.”

The
events of the 1930s, which saw the def­initive passage of the
Trotskyists into the armies of capital were to bear out Miasni­kov’s
prediction. But still the best ele­ments of the Left Opposition
were able to follow the other path, the path of the wor­kers’
revolution. Disgusted by Trotsky’s failure to confirm their
analysis in his writings from abroad, they broke from the Left
Opposition in 1930-2 and began to work with remnants of the Workers’
Group and the Democratic Centralism group in prison, evolving an
analysis of the failure of the world revolution and the meaning of
state capitalism. As Ciliga points out in his book, they were no
longer afraid to go right to the heart of the question and to accept
that the degeneration of the revolu­tion had not begun with
Stalin but had gathered pace even under the aegis of Lenin and
Trotsky. As Marx used to say, to be radical means to
go to the root.In
those dark years of reaction, what better contri­bution could the
communist left have made than to have burrowed fearlessly to the
roots of the proletariat’s defeat?

***************

Some
may see the debates that the Russian left communists carried on in
prison as nothing but a symbol of the impotence of revolutionary
ideas in the face of the capi­talist leviathan. But although
their situa­tion was the expression of a profound defeat for the
proletariat, the very fact that they continued to clarify the lessons
of the revo­lution in such appalling circumstances is a sign that
the historic mission of the pro­letariat can never be buried by
the temporary victory of the counter-revolution – even if that
victory lasts for decades. As Miasnikov wrote in connection with the
imprisonment of Sapranov:

“Now
Sapranov has been arrested. Even exile and the stifling of his voice
did not succeed in diminishing his energy, and the bureaucracy could
not feel safe about him till he was in the solid walls of a prison.
But a powerful spirit, the spirit of the October Revolution, can’t
be put in prison; even the grave can’t hide it. The principles of
the revolution are still alive in the working class in Russia and as
long as the wor­king class lives this idea cannot die. You can
arrest Sapranov, but not the idea of the revolution.”
(L’Ouvrier
Communiste,
1929)

It
is true that the Stalinist bureaucracy long ago succeeded in wiping
out the last communist minorities in Russia. But today, when a new
wave of international proletarian struggle is finding a muffled echo
even amongst the proletariat in Russia, the “powerful spirit” of
a second October has returned to haunt the minds of the Stalinist
hangmen in Moscow and their offspring in Warsaw, Prague and Peking.
When the workers of the ‘Socialist Fatherland’ rise up to destroy
once and for all the vast prison of the Stalinist state, they will,
in conjunc­tion with their class brothers all over the world, at
last be able to solve the problems posed both by the revolution of
1917 and its
loyal defenders: the revolutionaries of the Russian communist left.

“What
is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential,
the kernel from the accidental excrescences in the policies of the
Bolsheviks. In the
present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the
world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning
question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that sec­ondary
question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the
proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as
such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first,
those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world;
they are still the only
ones up
to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”

“This
is the essential and enduring
in
Bolshevik policy. In this
sense
theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the
head of the inter­national proletariat with the conquest of
political power and the practical placing of the problem of the
realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the
settlement of the score between capital and labour in the entire
world. In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be
solved in Russia. And in this
sense,
the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’.”
(Rosa Luxemburg, The
Russian Revolution)

C.
D. Ward

1The Manifesto of the Workers’ Group is available (together
with the KAPD’s footnotes) in French in Invariance, Series
II, no. 6. An incomplete version appeared in English in the
following issues of the Workers’ Dreadnought: 1 December
1923, 5 January 1924. The Appeal of the Workers’ Truth
group was published in the Socialist Herald, Berlin, 31
January 1923; extracts from it appear in English in Daniels, A
Documentary History of Communism.

2
The 17 June text and another text on the United Front by the same
group were reproduced in Workers’ Voice, no. 14.

3
Miasnikov’s subsequent history is as follows: from 1923 to 1927 he
spent most of his time in prison or exile for underground
activities. Escaping from Russia in 1927 he fled to Persia and
Turkey, eventually settling in France in 1930. During this period he
was still trying to organize his group in Russia. In 1946, for
reasons best known to himself, (perhaps expecting a new revolution
after the war?), Miasnikov returned to Russia…..and has never
heard of since.

4
The KAPD published the Manifesto of the Workers’ Group with
their own critical footnotes. They did not accept the Workers’
Groups analysis of the NEP. For them Russia in 1923 was a country of
peasant-dominated capitalism and the NEP was the expression of this.
Thus they stood “not for the transcendence of the NEP, but for
its violent abolition”.

5
Writing in L’Ouvrier Communiste in 1929 Miasnikov reported
on a conference held in August in 1928 between the Worker’s Group,
Sapranov’s ‘Group of Fifteen’, and remnants of the Workers’
Opposition. Arriving at a high level of programmatic agreement, the
conference resolved to “constitute the Central Bureau of the
Workers’ Group into the Central Organizational Bureau of the
Communist Workers’ Parties of the USSR.” (The decision to
set-up Communist Workers’ Parties for USSR may reflect the
concern to ensure autonomy for each Soviet republic and its
Communist Party expressed in the 1923 Manifesto, a
‘decentralist’ tendency that was criticized by the KAPD in their
notes to the Manifesto.)

Of the former Democraric Centralist Sapranov
and his group, Miasnikov had this to say:

“Comrade Sapranov was not made of the
same material as the leaders of the opposition of the celebrities.
The friendly embraces, and kisses of Lenin did not smother him or
kill the living, critical, proletarian spirit in him. And in the
years 1926-7 he reappeared again as leader of the ‘Group of
Fifteen’. The Platform of the Group of Fifteen had no links either
in ideas or theories with the platform of Democratic Centralism. It
was a new platform of a new group, with no other link to the past of
Democratic Centralism other than the fact that its spokesman was
Sapranov.

The Group of Fifteen drew its name from
the fact that its platform was signed by fifteen comrades. In its
main points, in its estimation of the nature of the state of USSR,
its ideas about the workers’ state, the programme of the Fifteen
is very close to the ideology of the Workers’ Group.”

Political currents and reference:

Development of proletarian consciousness and organisation:

General and theoretical questions:

People:

Notes towards a history of the Communist Left (Italian Fractions 1926-1939)

3242 reads

The text we are publishing here was part of the
introduction to the selection of artic­les from Bilan
on the war in Spain, publis­hed by the
ICC’s section in Italy (‘Bilan
1933-38,
Articoli sulla Guerra di Spagna’, Rivista
Internazionale,
no.1, November 1976). Thus it doesn’t attempt to present all the
positions of the Italian Left (which are developed in the articles
themselves) but rather aims to define the historical con­text in
which these positions evolved.

We are publishing it here not only because the texts
it introduces are the ones that appeared in the International
Review, nos. 4, 6, and 7, but also because
they enable us
to see the main stages of the struggle of the Italian communist left
to keep alive the revolutionary theory of the proletariat during the
period between the wars, a time when the counter-revolution was
exerting a terrible weight on the workers’ movement after the
crushing of the great revolutionary wave of 1917-23. It thus gives us
an invaluable insight into one of the most crucial qualities that a
proletarian revo­lutionary can have: to know how to hold onto and
clarify the historical experience of the class without falling under
the ideological influence of the ruling class.

--------------------------------

“I am going to speak briefly, fully cons­cious
of my responsibilities. What I have to say is extremely serious for
the party and for us all, but the development of this painful
situation has forced me to speak out. Independent of any
consid­eration of the greater or lesser sincer­ity and purity
of individuals, I have to declare, in the name of the Left, that the
proceedings taking place here have not shaken our opinions, but on
the con­trary have, together with the organization and
preparation of the Congress and the programme being presented, served
simply to strengthen our argument and reinforce the correctness of
our judgment. I must state that sadly we consi­der the method
employed here is a method harmful to the interests of our cause and
to the proletariat. (...) We believe it to be our duty to state
without hesi­tation and fully conscious of our respon­sibilities,
this important fact: that no solidarity can unite us to people who
independently of their intentions and their psychological
characteristics, we judge now to be the representatives of an
opportunist orientation within our party. (...) If I am a victim, if
we are all victims, of a terrible error in our evaluation of what is
happening, then I must be and we all must be considered as unworthy
to be in the party and we will disappear in the eyes of the working
class. But if this unrelenting opposi­tion that we have outlined
is correct and has vital implications for the future, then we can at
least say that we fought to the end against the pernicious methods
which have been used to attack us, and that by resisting each threat,
we brought a little clarity to the murky confusion created here. Now
that I have had to speak, judge me as you wish.”

This
is ‘Bordiga’s Declaration’ at the Lyon Congress in 1926 (which
was reported in Prometeo,
1 June 1928) and it put the final stamp on the exclusion of the Left
by the Communist Party of Italy. In fact it had been the Left which
had founded and led the party during its early years and which had
then carried out the arduous task of oppo­sition within it up
until the Lyon Congress. The enlarged Sixth Executive of the
Commu­nist International in February 1926 also finally sanctioned
the defeat of the Ital­ian Left on an international level in a
direct confrontation between Stalin and Bordiga.

It
appears necessary to give some ‘dates’ and reference points
regarding the process of degeneration of the CI; we are conscious,
however, of their inevitable deficiencies and limitations in only
being able to pro­vide a very pallid idea of the whole uphea­val
experienced by the proletarian movement during those years. Then
again the aim of this history is not to deal with the period, however
rich and fertile it is in lessons; a great deal of documentary
evidence exists on the subject, even though much has been produced by
the counter-revolution. Our aim is to look at the organized activity
of those communist groupings who, in the years following 1926, and
despite almost unbearable conditions, could stand firm and continued
a desperate and unequal struggle while being hunted down throughout
Europe by Nazi fascism and Stalinist killers, viewed by both sides as
the very worst enemies that had to be eliminated at all costs. Their
activity and achievements have gone completely unrecognized and
unknown, even by those all too few elements who feel the need to
identify with this revolutionary tradition.

In
1921 at
the Third Congress of the CI, the theory of the ‘United Front’
was put forward; the validity of the Livourne split was dis­cussed;
and the KAPD in Germany already pushed to the sidelines, broke with
the CI.

The
Communist Left seemed to be defeated. Following the work of the Essen
tendency of the KAPD, the ephemeral KAI formed. Their founding
Manifesto stated, amongst other things: “Nothing
can stop the flow of events, nor obscure the truth. We are saying
this without useless reticence, without senti­mentalism:
proletarian Russia of red October is becoming a bourgeois state.”

In
1922 the
Second Congress of the Communist Party of Italy took place, and saw
the proclamation of the Rome Theses. Also, the Fourth Congress of the
CI occurred, at which the Italian Left opposed fusion with the
socia­lists; the Left also made an analysis of fascism.

In
1923 Bordiga
and other leaders of the Communist Party of Italy were arrested. The
Bolshevization of the Communist Parties took place and the opposition
between the Italian Left and the CI continued to develop.

In
1924 the
magazine Prometeo
appeared Bor­diga refused to stand for election, declaring that:
“I
will never be a delegate, and the more you make plans without me, the
less time you will waste.”
The Come Conference took place as well as the Fifth Congress of the
CI.

In
1925 Bordiga
wrote, The
Trotsky Question and The Danger of Opportunism and the
International.
The ‘Comite
d’Entente’
was formed and dissolved.

In
1926 the
Left was excluded from the Party and the International. The period of
emigration began; Bordiga wrote his letter to Korsch.

The
letter sent by Bordiga from Naples to Karl Korsch (dated 28 October
1926) was in response to an attempt made by Korsch to implement a
programme of international unification of what remained of the
Communist Left. This is the sole remaining document from the
correspondence Bordiga engaged in with other revolutionaries during
those years (it seems that all the rest have dis­appeared without
trace) and because of its particular interest we will quote below
some passages which appear to be fundamental:

“.
.., The way you express yourself (Bord­iga addressing Korsch)
does not seem good to me. One cannot say that the “Russian
Revolution is a bourgeois revolution”. The
Revolution of 1917 was a proletarian revolution,
although it would be an error to generalize ‘tactical’ lessons
from it. Now
the problem being posed is what happens to the dictatorship of the
proleta­riat in one country when the revolution does not spread
to other countries.
A counter-revolution can take place; a process of degeneration can
occur and the question is to discover and define the symptoms of such
a degeneration, and its reflection within the communist party. One
cannot simply state that Russia is a country where capitalism is
expanding.

Our
search is for the construction of a left orientation that is truly
general and not circumstantial, which analyzes the phases and
developments of different past situations from a sound revolution­ary
basis and certainly not by ignoring their objective and distinctive
charac­teristics.

In a general sense, I think that today the first
task must be the preliminary work of
the elaboration of a political ideology of the international Left
based on the eloquent experiences of the Comin­tern, rather than
organization
and manoeuvring.
Unless one holds this posi­tion, any international initiative
re­mains difficult.

There is no need to try to split the (communist) parties and
the International. We should allow their artificial and mechanical
discipline to reach its logi­cal conclusions simply by going
along with the absurdities of their procedure, without ever
compromising our critical ideological and political positions and
without ever joining the prevailing leadership.

I believe that one of the faults of the present
International has been that it was based on a bloc of ‘local and
natio­nal’ oppositions. We must reflect on that, not of course
to exaggerate the situation, but to draw the lessons. Lenin carried
out a large amount of ‘spontan­eous’ elaboration, reckoning
on first of all materially regrouping different groups in order to
fuse them later into one organization during the heat of the
revolution. To a great extent this did not succeed.”

Thus,
there appears in the letter a defence first of all of the proletarian
nature of the Russian Revolution against the facile and simplistic
assertions of its ‘bourgeois nature’ by those who suddenly
discovered that ‘something was wrong’ in Russia. Then the crucial
problem is clearly posed: what becomes of the dictatorship of the
prole­tariat if the revolution does not spread to other
countries, and above all how to confront this question outside of a
purely organizational solution based on alliances or various blocs,
but within the context of the historic period, which was seen to be
one of deepening counter-revolution; such questions were at the root
of the difficult task of analysis, study and understanding of past
errors, for the sake of the future upsurges in class struggle.

Amongst
the intransigent positions defended there is one phrase in Bordiga’s
letter that stands out: “There
is no need to try to split the (communist) parties and the
International”.
Yet at that time the Left had already been put outside the
Interna­tional. The Left was defending here the idea of remaining
linked to what had, only five years before, been the real vanguard of
the world proletariat. They thus wanted to hold on to the hope that
the revolution was not truly finished for decades to come; that in
the mortal crisis of capitalism, the working class, finding itself
trapped in the terrible vice of the crisis, would still be able to
raise its head; and that with a push from ‘below’ the positions
defended by the Left could still triumph in the party and the
International. But the class had been decapitated; the physical
defeat of the proletariat in the struggle it had engaged in was
reflected in the degeneration and betrayal of the communist parties
and the International. The upsurge could not take place while the
class was unable to secrete its vanguard, the party, which now no
longer existed.

Bordiga
also held the view that the Inter­national was in effect the
world party of the proletariat. At the Fifth Congress of the CI (July
1924) he said:

“What I really mean is that in the pre­sent
situation, it is the International of the world revolutionary
proletariat which must repay a part of the many ser­vices it
received from the Communist Party of Russia.”

According
to this then, Bordiga was proposing that the International set itself
in opposi­tion to the Russian party and not become an instrument
of it -- to do so would spell the end of all hope. But this is what
happened.

With
this basic framework and preoccupation, the Italian Left began and
continued its work in exile:

“In some ways we play an international role
because the Italian people are a people of emigrants in the economic
and social meaning of the word, and, after the birth of fascism, in a
political sense as well. We have become a little like the Jews; if we
were beaten in Italy, we can console ourselves with the thought that
the Jews too are strong not in Palestine but elsewhere.”
(Interven­tion by Bordiga at the Sixth Enlarged Executive of the
CI.)

The
whole emigration of communist militants from Italy did not take the
same path. While the majority of them had to leave Italy after being
pitilessly hunted down by the fascists and excluded from the
Communist Party at the Lyon Congress (depriving them thus of any
organized help and refuge), some elements had already gone to Austria
and later in 1923 they went to Germany where revolutionary fighters
experienced the tra­gic events of that year. They had been
opposed to the decisions of the CI and had left the Communist Party
of Italy. They represented, in practice, the first Left opposition to
organize themselves in exile. They kept contact with the Entschiedene
Linke1
and with Karl Korsch in Germany, as well as with comrades of the Left
in Italy who formed the ‘Comite
d’ Entente’.
It
was after this period that there was an attempt at contact between
Bordiga and Korsch, and the letter quoted before was written.

This
group of exiles then left Germany and met up again in France having
travelled through Switzerland. While maintaining contact all the time
with their German comrades, they joined a communist opposition
committee (nothing to do with the Trotskyist Opposition) but did not
in any sense lose the autonomy of their group.

In
1927 at Pantin, a Parisian suburb, the refuge for emigrants, the
homeless, the hopeless and those driven from civil society, the Left
Fraction of'
the Communist Party of Italy was formed, but without Vercesi
(Ottorino Perrone, later one of the main figures in Bilan)
who had been expelled from ‘democratic’ France. There is all too
much to say about the vicissitudes experien­ced by these comrades
as they searched for work and for shelter, persecuted and unwan­ted
in the democracies and tracked down by the Stalinists, and yet
throughout it all continuing their intransigent struggle, defending
and diffusing communist positions without fear or compromise. To
exemplify the nature of the ‘relations’ existing with the
Stalinists we will quote a part of a letter (dated 19 April 1929)
from a certain Togliatti to Iaroslaysky:

“The
struggle that our party must wage against the debris of the Bordigist
oppo­sition which is,trying
to organize all the malcontents into a fraction, is very difficult.
We must struggle against these people in every country where the
Italian emigration exists (France, Belgium, Switzerland, North
America, South America etc). It is very difficult for us to wage this
struggle if our sister parties do not come to our aid. The Communist
Party of Italy asks the Communist Party of Russia for help in
continuing this already difficult struggle, which can only be made
more difficult by the exis­tence of any weaknesses. Our party has
nothing more to say. It asks only that the greatest severity be meted
out.”

We
do not know if the scission which split the emigration in France into
two parts, in­to a very reduced minority and a majority, had
taken place before or after Pantin, al­though the information we
have at our dis­posal makes us incline towards the second
alternative. The first group, which repre­sented the continuity
with the small nucleus whom we have already seen in Germany, brou­ght
Le
Reveil Communiste into
being and appeared between 1928 and 1929. This publi­cation
opened up its pages to Left groups in Germany (to Korsch from
Kommunistische
Politik and
to what remained of the KAPD in those years) and also to the Russian
Left in the person of Miasnikov.

The
central point characterizing tale position of Reveil
Communiste was
the denial of any proletarian character in the Russian state -- a
point which Bilan
during
the same years was much more cautious about -- and an open and
manifest support for the posi­tions of the KAPD. Reveil
Communiste
was succeeded by L’Ouvrier
Communiste
based on openly councilist positions.

The
second group was what was properly known as the Left Fraction of the
Communist Party of Italy; it published Prometeo,
written in Italian from June 1928 to 1938, sometimes every fifteen
days, sometimes every month, and Bilan
from 1933to
1938. The first years of their existence witnes­sed the debate
with Trotsky, exiled from then on in Prinkipo, and with groups who
claimed to be linked to Trotsky and who were organizing themselves
mainly in France.

In
November 1927 Contre
Le Courant
“organ
of the Communist Opposition”
appeared in Paris; it tried to put itself forward as a catalyst to
the various small Trotskyist groupings and to encourage, or at least
initiate, a process of regroupment of the whole left opposition, ‘An
Open Letter to the Communists of the Opposition’ appeared in Contre
Le Courant,
no.12, June 1928, and was sent to the following organizations: the
Marx-Lenin Circle which published Bulletin
Communiste;
the Italian Left Fraction; the Barre-Treint group which pub­lished
Redressement
Communiste;
the Lutte
de
Classe
group whose leader was Naville and Le
Reveil Communiste,
which has already been mentioned.

Nothing came of this project (it was only in 1930
that La Verite, with
the direct support of Trotsky, became the mouthpiece of the whole
Trotskyist opposition) but it is interesting to see how the Political
Bureau of the Italian Fraction responded to this in a letter written
by Vercesi:

“Many
opposition groups believe they must limit their role to that of a
sort of tribunal which records the progress of the course of
degeneration and pres­ents to the proletariat only evidence of
the truth that they presume to have dis­covered. We think that we
must prepare our own future, and that the most impor­tant thing
is to establish an orientation for communist activity.

We
believe that the crisis of the Inter­national has very profound
causes: its apparently uniform foundation, which was really
heterogeneous; the absence of a solid body of politics and communist
tac­tics, and, flowing from this, an adulter­ation of marxist
principles that led to a series of revolutionary disasters.

Apart
from the Russian Opposition, only our Fraction has elaborated in a
Platform a course of systematic action, and this has been due to
comrade Bordiga.2

There
are many oppositions. That is bad; but there is no other remedy than
con­frontation with their respective ideolo­gies, to engage
in a polemic in order to finally reach what you are suggesting to us.
If so many oppositions exist, it is because there are several
ideologies whose actual substance must be made clear. And this cannot
just be done through a simple discussion in a common organiza­tion.
Our watchword is to take our eff­orts to their ultimate
conclusion with­out being derailed into a ‘solution’ that
would in reality be a new failure.

We
believe that if the International, having officially altered its
programme, has failed in its role of leader of the revolution, the
communist parties have done no less. In view of the situation we are
living in, these are the organs we must work within in order to
struggle against opportunism, and even to trans­form these organs
into a revolutionary vanguard.”

This
letter (published in Contre
le Courant,no.13,
August 1928) ends finally by refusing the invitation to regroupment
for the rea­sons given before. We can see how Vercesi’s
response recalls the letter from Bordiga to Korsch, and shows the
same emphasis on the necessity to examine the past in a critical way
and to draw the lessons from the degen­eration and the
counter-revolutionary wave which had crushed the proletarian
movement; and again we see a confidence in an autono­mous,
intransigent and principled struggle within the communist parties.
More impor­tant still was the written correspondence between
Prometeo
(which first started to appear in June 1928) and Trotsky. (A good
documentation of this correspondence appears in a book entitled
Trotsky
and Italian Communism by
Corvisieri.)

In
its first letter to Trotsky, Prometeo
gave a brief outline of its history: the break with Reveil
Communiste;
its constitu­tion into a Fraction; the analysis of the
international situation, whose main charac­teristic was the
capitalist offensive; the analysis of Russia which had divided them
into
a majority which saw Russia as a pro­letarian state and a
minority which “denied
the proletarian character of the Russian state”;
the Italian question, on which the Fraction refused to recognize that
Social Democracy or the democratic forces of opposition could lead a
struggle against fascism and affirmed that “only
the working class had the possibility of leading the struggle on the
basis of the communist programme”.

Following the non-participation of the Fraction at a
conference of the ‘opposition’ in Paris, relations with Trotsky
became more strained and the Russian revolutionary wrote a letter
which posed the following questions to Prometeo:

“1.
Do you consider yourselves as a national movement or part of an
interna­tional movement?

2. What tendency do you belong to?

3. Why don’t you consider creating an
international fraction of your tendency?”

Prometeo answered:

“Fundamentally,
you are inviting us to tell you if we consider ourselves to be
communists. (...) We will now answer your questions:

1.
We consider ourselves to be part of an international movement.

2. We belong, since the foundation of the
Communist International, and even before, to the tendency of the
Left.

3.
We are not considering the creation of an international fraction of
our ten­dency because we believe as marxists that the
international organization of the proletariat is not an artificial
sum of groups and individuals from every country around a given
group. On the contrary, we consider that this organiza­tion must
be the result of the experience of the proletariat in every country.”

Thus there were opposing positions on ques­tions
of method and principle between Prometeo
and Trotsky: on the part of Prome­teo
there wasn’t total acceptance of the first four Congresses of the
CI, but a crit­icism of the ‘United Front’ tactic “which
(wrote Prometeo) led to the peasants’ and workers’ government, to
the Anglo-Russian Committee, to the Kuomintang, to the proletarian
anti-fascist committees”. The events in
Spain in 1930-1 led to a split and a definitive break in contact. On
Trotsky’s part:

“The
slogan of the Republic is naturally also a slogan for the
proletariat. But for the proletariat it is not only a question of
changing a king for a presi­dent, but also a purging of the
debris of feudalism.”

and he also asserted:

“The
separatist tendencies pose the democratic duty of national
self-deter­mination to the Revolution ... Separatism for the
workers and peasants is a way of expressing their social
indignation.”
(Trotsky, The
Spanish Revolution and the Duty of Communists)

Prometeo’s response to this could only be: “It
is obvious that we cannot take the same path and we reply to him
(Trotsky) as much as to the anarcho-syndicalist leaders of the CNT by
denying most vehe­mently that communists must stand in the
forefront of the defense of the Republic. For any Republic and least
of all for the “Spanish Republic”.”
(Prometeo,
22 August 1931)

The
split was therefore definitive and could only become more marked on
questions such as the social nature of the USSR, Trotsky’s analysis
of the bureaucratic leadership in Russia, and the defense of Russia
in case of imperialist war.

In
November 1933 there appeared the first issue of Bilan,
“the
monthly theoretical bulletin of the Left Fraction of the Commu­nist
Party of Italy”.
A historic framework was immediately defined in the ‘Introduction’
and this underlined precisely what the work of the bulletin was and
what tasks this group of revolutionaries was proposing to assume.

“It is not a change in the historic sit­uation
which has allowed capitalism to weather the storm of post-war events,
in 1933 as in 1917 capitalism stands con­demned definitively as a
system of social organization. What changed between 1917 and 1933 are
the relations of force between the two basic classes, between the two
historic forces which confront each other in the present period:
capitalism and the proletariat.

We have today reached a culminating point in this
period: the proletariat is perhaps no longer able to oppose the
outburst of a new imperialist war with the triumph of the revolution.
Nevertheless if any possibility of an immediate revolutionary upsurge
still remains it lies only with the understanding of past defeats.
Those who prefer the catch-phrase of immediate mobilization of the
workers to this indis­pensable work of historical analysis create
only confusion and prevent the real upsurge of proletarian struggles.

The framework of the new parties of the
proletariat can only arise on the basis of a profound understanding
of the causes of the defeat. This understanding can brook neither
censorship nor ostracism.

To draw up a balance-sheet (bilan)
of the post-war events is therefore to establish the conditions for
the victory of the proletariat in all countries.”

With
this as their axis Bilan
could
make pro­gress and continue its work by coming to grips with all
the fundamental questions of the revolutionary movement, from the
analysis of the crisis of capitalism (decadence) to the criticism of
national liberation move­ments, from the defining of those
moments when the upsurge of the proletarian class would once more be
possible, to the unrelen­ting criticism of the ‘communist
parties’ and Russia. The social nature of Russia was still not
clear, but its political role as an imperialist power which the
working class must refuse to support in any way, especial­ly in
view of the impending world war, was made clear. As a fundamental
moment in revolutionary work Bilan
also
encouraged debate with other political groupings and published texts
from other comrades.

In
1935 Bilan
changed
from being the “monthly
theoretical bulletin of the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of
Italy”
to become “the
monthly theoretical bulletin of the Italian Fraction of the Communist
Left”,
a change which represented both the final split with a party which
was from now on a tool of the capitalist counter-revolution, and the
affirmation of the international nature of its tasks.

In
1936 divergences started to appear on the question of the Spanish war
and these divergences provoked a split in Bilan.
At
the same time the links with the Ligue
des Communistes Internationalistes de Belgique
which had been established at the end of 1932 were broken. This group
had come out of Trotskyism and had immediately afterwards become
subject to a strong councilist influence. In 1932, Bilan
and
the League took up the same positions in criticizing the
International Left Opposition (Trotsky­ist) which when faced by
the fascist attack in Germany launched an appeal for a united front
for the defence of ‘democratic demands’, considering them to be
stages in the struggle for the communist revolution.

The
agreement between the two groups meant that they both refused the
solution proposed by the Trotskyist Opposition for the
recon­stitution of a communist party; this agree­ment also
strengthened the possibility of contact and debate between the two
organiza­tions, the aim of which had to be the recon­struction
of the theoretical heritage of the proletariat, in order to provide
an analysis of and a political response to the events of those years.

The
Spanish war signaled the break-down of a debate which had been
pursued for six years and which Bilan
had
greatly contribu­ted to. The majority of the League chose to give
support to the anti-fascist war in an analagous form to the minority
of Bilan
and the French group L’Union
Communiste.

In
fact, Hennaut, a very important represen­tative of the League,
wrote the following in a document sanctioning the break in February
1937:

“We know that the defense of democracy is only
the formal aspect of the struggle; the antagonism between capitalism
and the proletariat is its real essence. And on the basis of not
abandoning the class struggle under any circumstances, the duty of
revolutionaries is to participate in it.”

A
substantial
expression
of the struggle of capitalism against the proletariat is here
considered as a formal
expression
of the proletarian struggle against capitalism. ... But the whole
League did not take this position. A small minority, but the
major­ity in Brussels, defended the position of Bilan.
It was expelled from the organiza­tion and formed the “Belgian
Fraction of the Communist Left”.
From 1937 to 1939 it published Communisme,
a duplicated monthly magazine.

In
1938, Bilan
ended and Octobre
took
its place, “the
monthly organ of the Internatio­nal Bureau of the Communist
Left”.
Five issues of Octobre
were
published, the last in August 1939. A month later the second world
carnage began.

What
links do the groups who claim contin­uity (more or less organic)
with the Ital­ian Left have with the work of the Fraction in
exile? Let us examine the position of the International Communist
Party (PCI) who
publish Programme
Communiste.
Programme Communiste
always claims, in words at least, to come from the work of Bilan
and
Prometeo
--
perhaps to fill the gap existing between 1926 and World War II. It
has never attemp­ted to clarify the work of Bilan
for
its militants and readers (except for some short articles in one
issue of the magazine in 1957 when Ottorino Perrone (Vercesi) died)
and so Bilan
remains
merely a name and not a very important one at that. To read Bilan
would
have been traumatic for those who then followed a diametrically
opposed path to that laid down by the Ital­ian Fraction in exile.
Today there doesn’t even appear to be any trace of this false
modesty, for although no-one would say openly that they have nothing
to learn from the work of Bilan,
this is implicitly under­stood in certain articles which touch on
the question of the workers’ movement in the thirties. Although in
one article in Programma
Comunista,
no.21, 1971 there is still a criticism of Trotsky when he called for
“a
whole series of hybrid coalitions amongst the international
opposition”,
and goes on to say that “in
the end this pot­pourri of opposition joined together to form the
still-born IVth International”,
in 1973 Programma
Comunista could
write:

“When
Trotsky affirmed the prime necessity of forming a nucleus based
solidly on revolutionary positions as an indispensable
but not exclusive or sufficient condition for a revolutionary upsurge
in the
short-term or long-term and as the means by which the next conflict
will become revolutionary, he was simply articulating a basic marxist
truth, a truth all the more important when it is not
so clear and can be ignored and even laughed
at by the right, the ‘left’ and even the ‘extreme left’.”

Perhaps Programma Comunista
mean by “based
solidly on revolutionary positions” entrism
into the social democratic parties, or even the defense of Russia
during World War II? What other meaning can there be to the phrase
“the
means by which the next conflict become
revolutionary” when those ‘means’ are
the tactics of Trotskyism? Further on we find:

“If Trotsky was mistaken, it was not because he
put forward the necessity of a
IVth International, nor that he believed such a necessity to be the
aim of his work, as opposed to those who abstractly recognized the
necessity but sought ref­uge in the protected atmosphere of the
libraries - like the Korschs and the Pannekoeks of this world.”

And
why not write here ‘the Vercesis and the Bordigas’ etc? But the
article continues:

“Only
mindless sectarians could rejoice and
mock the tragedy of the so-called IVth International, which fell
because it became the prey of the most hetero­geneous forms of
opportunism.”

and
finally the article reaches its climax: “The
IVth International remains to be built!”
At last! What can a group which wants to “work
today with patience, tenacity and modesty to make the day possible
when the
cry of the revolutionary vanguard will be: Long Live the IVth
International”
have to do with the Communist Left and Bilan?

Gentlemen,
you have had to wait for the burial of their bodies before being able
to write such things, which can’t be attributed to the madness of
an imbecile writing under the anonymity of your magazine but are the
‘collective’ work of the ‘Party’.

The Internationalist Communist Party who publish
Battaglia Comunista also
claim origins in Bilan.
One issue of Prometeo,
the
theoretical organ of Battaglia
Comunista,
was entirely dedicated to the theoretical and political work of
Vercesi. We quote below some passages from this text:

“The
Spanish events, superior by far to their protagonists, also brought
to light the strong points as well as the weaker points of our
analysis: the majority of Bilan
held
to a formulation which was theoretically impeccable but which had the
fault of remaining a simple abstrac­tion; the minority on the
other hand took the position of participation at all costs, and did
not seem to be always aware of avoiding the antics of bourgeois
jacobinism, even when on the barricades.

Given
the objective possibilities, our comrades in Bilan
had
to pose the problem, the same one our party had to pose later on when
faced with the question of the partisans, of calling on the workers
who were fighting not to fall into the trap of the strategy of
imperialist war.”
(Prometeo,
Series II, no.10, March 1958)

Exactly,
Battaglia
Comunista defended
the same position in the immediate period after World War II as the
minority of Bilan
during
the Spanish war (not to mention its electo­ral participation in
1948). The minority of Bilan
did
not go to Spain to defend the Republic against fascism (as is shown
else­where in the texts we have published) but to defend
communist principles and tactics within the militias.

But the problem does not rest there, be­cause the
pivotal issue is that what Battaglia
calls
our ‘formalism’ or ‘abstrac­tions’ is for us a principle,
a class line.

S.

1
The Entschiedene Linke was a group formed by elements
expelled from KPD and was very close to KAPD (in Berlin). It was led
by Schwartz but Korsch also participated in its activity. A short
time before this the Spartacus League no. 2 was also formed. It
regrouped the AAUE, the group around Iwan Katz and other elements.
Later on Korsch has divergences with the KAPD and had to detach
himself from the organization and brought Kommunistische Politik
into being.

2
In all probability this is a reference to the theses presented by
the Left at the Lyon Congress.

Heritage of the Communist Left:

Political currents and reference:

Development of proletarian consciousness and organisation:

People:

The First Congress of Internationalisme (Belgium)

2411 reads

The
main task of any congress is to draw up a balance-sheet of the
organization’s past activity and outline perspectives for the
coming year. This task was particularly important for the First
Congress of Inter­nationalisme, the ICC section in Belgium. It
must be remembered that it was just over a year ago, at its Founding
Congress, that the section in Belgium was formed from three groups
(Journal des Luttes de Classe, Revolutionnaire Raden Socialisten,
Vrije Raden Socialisten) which, with the help of the ICC, had
surmounted their previous confusions. These three groups had been
engen­dered by the re-emergence of the proletarian struggle, and,
after several years of labor­ious study and debate, were
gradually won over to class positions, despite several incursions
into the mire of bourgeois ideo­logy. At the time, this event was
hailed by the ICC as an important step in its own development, not so
much because of the new section itself, but because of the positive
lessons of this experience of three isolated groups unifying
themselves on the basis of a proletarian programme. This was an
expres­sion of the revolutionary movement’s growing
understanding of the need for world-wide unification. Thus the
primary tasks of Internationalisme in its first year were to overcome
localist prejudices, to centralize the activity of the section in an
effective manner, to overcome linguistic divisions and assure the
publication of the magazine in two Languages (French and Dutch), to
inte­grate itself into the work of the whole ICC and assimilate
the experience of other sec­tions, and, finally, to ensure the
rapid development of its militants, so that the section could catch
up with the general theoretical level of the Current. The importance
of all this work could not be under-estimated, and it was only a
thorough grasp of the difficulties met with in the preceding period
that allowed this step to be confidently taken.

After
analyzing the economic and political situation at both national and
international level1,
the Congress concretized the further development and strengthening of
the section by adopting political perspec­tives for the year
ahead. The most import­ant aspect of these perspectives was
un­doubtedly the decision to publish Internationalisme
in both languages on a monthly basis as soon as possible. The
increased frequency of the magazine’s appearance ref­lects the
fact that the developing workers’ struggle is being confronted with
more and more problems which the organization of revolutionaries must
respond to if it is to fulfill its function within the proletariat.
With the deepening of the crisis and the intensification of class
struggle, revolu­tionaries will have to intervene more and more
systematically, not only in response to the immediate needs of the
struggle, but also to prepare themselves in a consistent and evolving
manner for the revolutionary outbreaks which are now germinating in
the fertile soil of the proletariat’s day-to- day struggles.

A
second task of the Congress was also con­cerned with preparing
the organization for the future. That is to say, the taking up of
positions on general questions which are not being posed directly to
the class today, but which will inevitably arise in the struggles of
the future. Like the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale,
the First Congress of Internationalisme dealt with the problem of the
period of transition from capitalism to communism. This is by
definition a problem which demands a lot of preparatory study. When
the whole proleta­riat rises up against the bourgeoisie, when it
smashes the bourgeois state from top to bottom, when the world is
plunged into the whirlpool of the revolution, revolutionaries will
have had to have really studied and drawn the lessons from the past
if they are going to give answers to the immediate prob­lems of
how the proletariat will organize its political power. Because the
inner dia­lectic of the struggle of the working class today is
leading it towards a revolutionary outcome; because each struggle
contains within it the seeds of the revolution, of communism, the ICC
considers it absolutely necessary for its next International Congress
to take up a position on the general frame­work of the political
relations that will exist during the period of transition.

Thus
the adoption by the First Congress of Internationalisme of a
resolution on this question is a moment in the international
discussion which is preparing the ground for the Second International
Congress. And although the resolution presented at the Second
Congress of Revolution Internationale (published in International
Review,
no. 8) was also accepted by the Congress of Inter­nationalisme,
the discussion on this ques­tion was both controversial and
extremely fruitful. The basic debate concerned the nature of the
state during the period of transition and has already appeared
publicly in International
Review,
no. 6; and it was considerably enriched by the discussion at this
Congress.

Finally, two important texts were presented to the
Congress: theses on the class strug­gle in Belgium and theses on
the continuity of communist groups in Belgium.2
This Congress
was an important moment in the life of the section in Belgium, in
many ways a step which marked the end of its initial phase of
development and the opening up of a new phase of political evolution.
It is absolutely necessary to understand where we have come from in
order to know where we are going. These texts were for the young
sec­tion in Belgium a way of renewing its ties with the past of
the proletariat and of understanding itself as a link in the
histor­ical chain which connects all the struggles and political
expressions of the working class.

1
We are not publishing these documents here, since the texts on the
international situation from the Second Congress of Revolution
Internationale have already been published in International
Review no. 8, and a resolution on the situation in Belgium was
published in Internationalisme no. 8.

Life of the ICC:

Development of proletarian consciousness and organisation:

The CWO and the Lessons of Regroupment for Revolutionaries

3752 reads

IR9, 2nd
Quarter, April 1977

An important split has recently taken place in the
ranks of the Communist Workers’ Organization (CWO), a revolutionary group in Britain
that defends positions close to those of the ICC. Although the details of the
split remain obscure, since the ‘seceders’ from the CWO have apparently failed
to produce a single document explaining why they broke away, it seems that the
entire Liverpool section – more or less the old Workers’ Voice group – has left
the CWO complaining of its intolerant attitude both to other groups and to
internal discussion. These charges have perhaps some solid justification. But
the old Workers’ Voice group is hardly well-qualified to complain about intolerance
towards other groups: it was the first of various groups to break off relations
with the ICC, accusing it of being ‘counter-revolutionary’ on the flimsiest of
political arguments (see WV 13, ‘Statement’). From what little evidence
there is, it seems that the Liverpool group’s main motivation for leaving the
CWO was a pronounced tendency towards localism and activism; a purely verbal
commitment to ‘intervene in the working class’, seeing both intervention and
the working class in the most narrow and fragmented way. Both these localist
tendencies, and the Liverpool
group’s failure to debate differences in a genuinely political manner,
are in direct continuity with the practice of the old Workers’ Voce (see
‘Sectarianism Unlimited’ in World Revolution, 3).The reaction of the remaining members of the
CWO seems to be in line with that group’s tradition of self-enclosed dogmatism
to the extent that their publications have not shown a concern to go more
deeply into the political implications of this split.

We don’t want to dwell on the specific details of this
split. We simply want to say that it is the logical conclusion of what we
referred to as an “incomplete regroupment” (WR 5) when Workers’ Voice
and Revolutionary Perspectives fused to form the CWO in September 1975. It is
the inevitable result of the policy of sectarian isolation the CWO chose for
themselves when they broke off with the ICC. This isolation has been growing
ever since the CWO was formed: most of the contacts they have had with revolutionary
elements in other countries (among them Pour Une Intervention Communiste in France and
the ex-Revolutionary Workers’ Group in the US)
have led nowhere. Now the group has lost one of its strongest sections. More
than ever, the CWO remains a local group, trapped by the narrowness of its
horizons. Although the CWO itself may be unable to understand why all this has
happened in a period which is basically favourable to the regroupment of
revolutionary forces, it is important for us to look at the whole experience of
the CWO as a problem of the re-emergingrevolutionary movement, and to seewhat lessons this experience holds for the process of revolutionary
regroupment that is going on today. We would also like to take this opportunity
to express our criticisms of what we consider to be the main political
errors of the CWO. This critique will serve as a response to the polemic
with the ICC in the CWO’s article in Revolutionary Perspectives 4, ‘The
Convulsions of the ICC’, which purports to show why the ICC is part of the
bourgeoisie.

THE PROBLEMS OF THE RE-EMERGING
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

In order to understand the bizarre situation in which
there are two revolutionary groups in Britain, both defending class positions,
but who have no relationship with each other because one considers the other to
be ‘counter-revolutionary’, we have to go back several years to the time when
the small but growing revolutionary movement of today began to emerge out of
the long night of the counter-revolution, whose end was signalled by the
resurgence of proletarian struggle after 1968.

Precisely because the counter-revolution that followed
the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 was so long and so deep, the
re-emergence of the revolutionary movement in the late 1960s was hindered by
innumerable obstacles and confusions. These is no automatic connection
between the level of class struggle at a given time and the clarity of the
proletariat’s revolutionary minorities. Following the May ’68 events in France,
the international proletariat, reacting to the first shocks of the just
beginning global economic exists, launched itself into a series of battles on a
scale the world hadn’t seen for fifty years. But although the re-appearance of
the proletariat on the scene of history posed the general conditions for
the rebirth of a communist fraction within the class, the first revolutionary
groups engendered by the reviving class struggle found it extremely difficult
to understand the meaning of their own existence, the tasks which they had been
created to fulfil.

The most serious problem confronting these groups was
the complete break in organic continuity that existed with the revolutionary
movement of the past. In previous periods, the proletariat had seen its parties
collapse or betray the class, but each time a new organization had emerged
after a brief period, taking the best elements of the old parties and creating
a higher synthesis out of them. Thus although the 2nd International was lost to
the proletariat when it capitulated to the imperialist war in 1914, the
‘wreckage’ was not absolute. Within a few years a new International had arisen
like a phoenix out of the ashes, based on those elements of the old
International who had remained loyal to the programmatic principles of the
working class. While breaking with the parties of Social Democracy, the
new Communist International (Comintern) did not have to ‘start from scratch’.
It could count on an organizational experience and a presence within the
working class built up by revolutionaries for decades before the disaster of
1914.

In contrast to this, the defeat of the revolutionary
wave of 1917-23, because it took place in a new period when the only
perspective facing the proletariat was socialism or barbarism, and thus when
the only proletarian political minorities were ones based on an explicitly
communist programme, meant the virtual disappearance of the revolutionary
movement from the scene of history. The Left Communist fractions that detached
themselves from the degenerating Comintern continued to play a vital role in
drawing the lessons from the defeat of the revolution, but in the end they were
unable to resist the immense pressure of bourgeois ideology in a period of
defeat and demoralization. The story of the Left Communist movement from the
1920s to the 1950s is one of growing isolation and fragmentation.

The tragic break in continuity with the past movement
meant that the new groupings which emerged in the late 1960s were deprived of
vital theoretical and organizational experience, lacked traditions of
intervention in revolutionary struggle, were isolated from the class, and so
on. In addition to this, the movement arose ‘in parallel’, as it were, with the
so-called student revolt. Many of the new revolutionary elements had originally
come out of the university milieu with all the confusions and prejudices that
flourish in such an environment.

This petty bourgeois influence was most strongly felt
in that area where the new revolutionary groups were the most confused: the question
of organization. The betrayals of the Bolshevik Party, the transformation of
the previous revolutionary parties into monstrous bureaucratic machines, had as
early as the 1920s produced a reaction in the working class movement that
tended to suspect any form of revolutionary organization as being an
expression of a desire to substitute the organization for the working class.
Certain tendencies coming from the Council Communists in the 1930s and 40s
began to evolve towards the position that revolutionary organizations
constitute a barrier to the development of an autonomous proletarian struggle.

It is hardly surprising that the young revolutionary
movement of the 1960s should have adopted these ‘councilist’ errors at the
beginning. Many individuals moved towards revolutionary positions in
reaction to the bureaucratic and vanguardist pre-tensions of the various
leftist organizations. And if one also bears in mind the fact that libertarian,
situationist, and other ‘anti-authoritarian’ conceptions were intimately bound
up with the petty-bourgeois milieu out of which many of the revolutionaries had
come, we can see why the question of organization was such a stumbling block to
the majority of the new revolutionary currents. The role of revolutionaries within
the class struggle, the way to organize a revolutionary minority, the meaning
of intervention in the class struggle – these questions were understood much
less readily than more general class positions like the bourgeois nature of the
trade unions or of the Stalinist regimes. There was an almost endemic fear of
‘Leninism’ and ‘Bolshevism’, a feeling that anyone who tended to stress the
importance of the revolutionary organization must be ‘just the same’ as the
Trotskyists or Stalinists, interested only in constituting themselves as fake
‘leaders’ of the working class. Similarly any attempt to organize revolutionary
activity in a centralized manner was viewed with intense suspicion: the
only centralism that could be imagined was the bureaucratic hierarchy of the
leftist organizations. At the same time aspects of revolutionary work such as
regular, methodical publication, a systematic approach to intervention and
distribution of literature, etc – were often looked down upon as so much
‘organizational fetishism’. Needless to say, this suspicion, amounting at times
to a virtual paralysis of any revolutionary work, was a direct product of the
trauma of the counter-revolution: an understandable obsession, but one which
had to be overcome as soon as possible if the revolutionary movement was ever
to get of the ground.

Because of these problems, many of the groups that
were produced by the first wave of proletarian struggle between 1968 and 1972
disappeared completely. And the majority of these were casualties of a deep
confusion about organization. A typical example of this was the Swedish group
Internationell Arbetarkamp (IAK). Beginning as a healthy reaction against
Maoism, IAK came close to elaborating a clear communist platform but when it
had to confront the problem of how to organize itself, it drew back in the most
abject terror. Coming under the influence of ‘modernist’ ideas like those of
Invariance in France, it quickly began to theorize its own inner decomposition,
arguing that all groups are ‘rackets’ and bourgeois in nature and that
the task of communists is to ‘live like communists’. Not surprisingly the group
soon splintered into a number of demoralized individuals pursuing their own
development via vegetarianism, writing ‘anti-capitalist’ novels, etc, etc.

One of the main problems during this period was that
there was not yet a political current that was capable of acting as a solid
pole of regroupment, of offering groups like IAK an alternative to political
disintegration. This was inevitable because the fledgling revolutionary
movement had no alternative but to grow and mature through its own experiences.
Nevertheless, this process of maturation was slowly unfolding. An early
sign of this was the disappearance of most of the currents who, dazzled by the
post-war boom, had rejected the marxist conception of crisis, and now found
their fantasies about a crisis-free capitalism shattered by the dramatic
sharpening of the economic crisis after 1973 (situationism, Gauche Marxiste,
ICO, etc). Throughout the period 1968-1973, there was a gradual and steady
process of decantation going on in the revolutionary movement. In this context
the persistence and perseverance of the international current (then represented
by Revolution Internationale in France, Internationalism in the US, and
Internacionalismo in Venezuela) in defending the need for a coherent political
platform as the basis for a regroupment of revolutionaries were an expression
of the objective needs of the revolutionary movement. For us to assert this today
is not a question of retrospectively blowing our own trumpet, or arbitrarily
declaring ourselves to be a pole of regroupment (unique and everlasting) as the
CWO seem to claim in their ‘Convulsions of the ICC’. If the international
current was the most consistent revolutionary regroupment of the post-1968
period it was because of its profound concern to re-appropriate and deepen the
gains of the past revolutionary movement. The fact that some of the founding
members of the international current had been directly involved in the Left
Communist movement from the 1930s to the 1950s was an important element here
though not the only decisive factor. As we have said any direct organic
continuity with the Communist Left had been finally severed by the counter-revolution.
But the international current was committed to building on a political
continuity with the Left Communist movement of the past and thus elaborated a
platform that aims at a synthesis of the fundamental contributions of the
historical workers’ movement. This meant that the current tended to become a
pole of regroupment and contributed to the clarification of the revolutionary
movement of the early 1970s. But, because of its immaturity, it took a long
time for the implications of this to be understood by the current itself, and
many internal conflicts and confusions had to be resolved before the
international current could fully assimilate the reality of its own existence.
For example, it had to deal with ‘anti-organizational’ hesitations in its own midst,
expressed by the departure of the activist elements of the PIC from RI in 1973
and of the modernist Tendence Communiste in 1974 and so. (In the ‘Convulsions
of the ICC’, the CWO present these set-backs as the signs of a group in its
death-throes; today they can clearly be seen as the growing pains of the
ICC).

Thus, as with most of the revolutionary currents of
the time, the international current that was growing into the ICC of today
understood the organizational question last of all. The relative immaturity of
the current at this time was inevitable, but it was to have important
repercussions on some early attempts at regroupment. This was to become
painfully clear in Britain.

SETBACKS TO REGROUPMENT IN BRITAIN

In May 1973 various groups and individuals attempting
to clarify communist positions came together in Liverpool to
discuss the perspective ahead of them. There were three groups from Britain:
the Liverpool-based Workers’ Voice, which had broken away from Trotskyism and
was trying to re-assimilate the gains made by the Left Communists in the early
twenties; some comrades from Scotland who had split from Solidarity in order to
defend a marxist conception of the capitalist crisis; and a London-based group,
some of whose members had also split from Solidarity but who saw themselves as
being close to the positions of Revolution Internationale and Internationalism
(who also attended). On crucial questions like the trade unions, organization,
and the decadence of capitalism, there was considerable confusion in the
British groups. RI’s and Internationalism’s contributions were extremely
important in trying to clarify some of these problems.

A number of meetings followed over the next few months
and the groups in Britain
made considerable progress. (The London
group evolved into World Revolution, and the elements in Scotland
into Revolutionary Perspectives.) Discussion between the groups was continuous,
fraternal, and constructive; a number of joint interventions were made (such as
the WR/WV leaflet on Chile in
September 1973 when the Allende government fell). But a problem began to be
posed by the fact that WR was moving much more quickly towards the platform and
politics of the international current than RP or WV. Questions as crucial as
the decadence of capitalism or the alternative of war or revolution, socialism
or barbarism, evoked hesitations and incomprehension on the part of WV at
first. RP, while denying the problem of the saturation of markets as a source
for capitalist crisis, assimilated the general concept of decadence more
quickly. RP however, expressed disagreements on the question of the Russian
Revolution, and the Bolshevik Party in particular. It took RP a long time to
fully grasp the proletarian character of the Bolshevik Party. This ‘uneven
development’ of the three groups was to become a source of complications for
one fundamental reason: the discussion and cooperation between the groups had
at no stage been based on a clear conception of the regroupment of
revolutionaries. From the beginning, regroupment was seen as a vague,
distant prospect, perhaps only necessary when the revolution began. Discussion
between the groups was conducted on the unspoken understanding that each group
had its own ‘autonomy’, its own positions to develop and defend. The
friendliness of the discussion was genuine enough, but it was unstable to the
extent that it had not had to face the uncomfortable question of real
unification, fusion into a single organization, centralized on an international
scale.

Here again the international current was the first to
pose the question of regroupment in a clear way. But by the time the question
had been made explicit, its implicit emergence had already
resulted in a deterioration of relations between the groups in Britain.
This was especially true after a conference in Paris in January 1974 when WR
changed its position on the Russian Revolution (viz. that the October
insurrection was a state capitalist counter-revolution led by a ‘bourgeois’
Bolshevik Party) and showed its clear will to be part of the international
current of RI/Internationalism/Internacionalismo, Workers’ Voice interpreted
this as a ‘capitulation’ by WR to the semi-Bolshevik designs of the
international tendency (an interpretation still put forward by the CWO in
‘Convulsions’), and relations between WR and WV deteriorated rapidly after
this. WV increasingly retreated into a sullen unwillingness to discuss its
differences with WR (see ‘Sectarianism Unlimited’, WR3) and did not
respond to the various letters WR wrote to it in order to try to keep the
discussion going. (It seems that today the Liverpool
group intends to continue the same policy of silence over its differences with
the CWO.)

By the time the international current really began to
make it clear that regroupment meant regroupment today into a single
international organization, it appeared to the groups ‘outside’ the current
that the international current (which was now being joined by groups in Italy
and Spain) was expressing some kind of ‘imperialist’ desire to expand at all
costs, and to incorporate all the other groups into itself in order to puff up
its own pretensions. The current was not only talking about regroupment;
it had begun to construct an organizational framework in which this regroupment
could actually take place. This provoked a suspicious response from the other
groups, and not only in Britain.
The Chicago-based Revolutionary Workers’ Group, which had broken from
Trotskyism and had been moving towards the current in a very positive way, also
began to draw back when the practical question of its integration into the
current began to be posed. Some elements of WV and the RWG also harboured
certain illusions as to the possibility of independent work with the modernist
Tendance Communiste before the latter’s complete political disintegration and
disappearance.

In November 1974, WV’s silence was broken by a
statement asserting that the current was a counter-revolutionary force because
of its position on the state in the period of transition. The RP group still
showed a willingness to discuss political questions, but it now began to raise
more and more objections to the positions of the current, especially on the
Russian Revolution and the period of transition. After discussing the
possibility of entering the international current as a ‘minority’ federation
and finding this proposal severely criticized by the current, it began to
consider itself as the ‘clearest’ group and thus to act as if it, and no longer
the current, was the pole of regroupment for revolutionaries. It demanded that
the current (which in January 1975 constituted itself as the International
Communist Current) change its positions, which were now seen to ‘cross class
lines’ on the question of the state, and on the final demise of the Russian
Revolution. At this stage its perspective was one of convincing the ICC of its
“errors (which) are subjective and do not represent an alien class viewpoint”
(‘Open Letter to the ICC’, RP, February 1975). Shortly after this RP
abandoned hope of reforming the ICC and concentrated on regrouping with the
other groups who seemed to be closer to its own positions and who by now formed
a kind of ‘counter-tendency’ to the ICC: WV, RWG, and the PIC. Discussions with
RWG and the PIC were to reveal substantial differences, but in September 1975
WV and RP fused to form the CWO. Initially it appears that the RP elements in
the CWO continued to regard the ICC as a ‘confusionist’, not a bourgeois group,
but later on the whole CWO adopted the position of the old WV, viz. that the
ICC was a counter-revolutionary faction of capital with whom all discussion was
useless. Despite this the CWO claim in the ‘Convulsions of the ICC’ article
that it was the ICC that put an end to discussion between the groups. This is
an incredible assertion when one bears in mind the endless statements issued by
the ICC both before and after the formation of the CWO, affirming its
willingness to maintain a dialogue with the CWO, a position it still adheres to
today, without putting any conditions on the debate. It is all the more
incredible when one considers that during the regroupment process in Belgium,
the different groups involved (RRS of Antwerp, the VRS of Ghent and Journal
Lutte de Classe of Brussels)
invited the CWO to participate in their conference with the full accord of the
ICC. The CWO did not come however, and their silence was regretted in the
documents that came out of the Conference in 1975 (see The International
Review, no. 4).

THE PRICE OF IMMATURITY

This brief trajectory of the process which led to the
formation of the CWO will convey very little unless we analyse the underlying
reasons for it taking place, and try to draw some lessons from it. We don’t
want to rake over all the details of this sad affair. It is a story of mistakes,
misunderstandings, and immaturity ‘on both sides’, and it would be quite futile
to engage in petty recriminations about who did what to whom. That kind of
approach only serves to obscure the wider political issues involved. Our task
today is to understand why such a deterioration of relations took place.
Only by considering the general characteristics of the affair will it become
possible to see how at certain junctures, petty and/or secondary questions
could have exacerbated the problem so much. In retrospect, it is possible to
see a number of general reasons for the failure of this attempt at regroupment.

On the part of the groups ‘outside’ the current, the
main obstacles to regroupment were problems which, as we have seen, were common
to many of the groups who had emerged from the period of counter-revolution: a
traumatic fear of ‘Bolshevism’ and the legacy of the counter-revolution, and a
profound lack of clarity on the question of organization.

1. One of the main bones of contention between the ICC
and the other groups was the Russian Revolution and the lessons to be drawn
from it. This is no accident. The Russian Revolution was one of the most
important events in the proletariat’s history, and anyone who fails to
understand the lessons of this experience will not succeed in disengaging
themselves from the counter-revolution. The reaction of some elements of the
proletariat to the defeat of this revolution was to reject the whole experience
as being no more than a bourgeois revolution or a moment in the evolution of
capital into new forms. The Bolshevik Party in particular was often scrubbed
out of the whole proletarian movement, and portrayed as a standard bearer of
state capitalism interested only in the modernization of Russia.
This kind of interpretation, which we might refer to loosely as ‘councilist’,
had a considerable influence on all the groups in Britain
when they started out. WR had originally called itself Council Communism and
was violently opposed to Bolshevism; WV went through an explicitly councilist
phase when it rejected any idea of a revolutionary party; and RP started out
with positions close to those of Otto Ruhle, i.e. that all parties are
bourgeois and that 1917 in Russia was a bourgeois revolution.

In contrast to this, RI from the very beginning
insisted on the proletarian character of the October insurrection and of the
Bolshevik Party. This ‘naturally’ produced suspicions that RI was still somehow
tainted with Bolshevism and Leninism, that it was prepared to excuse or apologize
for all the anti-working class actions of the Bolsheviks after 1917. Further
suspicion was engendered by RI’s affirmation that during the transition period
a state was inevitable, a necessary evil that the proletariat would have to
make use of but could never identify itself with. And since RI had always
defended the need for a ‘revolutionary party’, the current’s talk about
regroupment was interpreted as yet another party-building adventure of the
Trotskyist kind. Failing to understand the method the international
current used to draw the lessons from the Bolshevik experience, the other
groups tended to suspect the ‘counter-revolution’ behind every position that
they could not immediately grasp.

After a great deal of discussion, both WV and RP moved
away from the councilist interpretation of the Russian Revolution and accepted
the proletarian character of the revolution and of the Bolshevik Party. They
also began to talk about the need for a revolutionary party. But they would not
even consider the idea that the transitional state was something distinct from
the working class, and implied that the ICC’s position menat repeating the
Bolshevik mistake of subordinating the workers’ councils to an alien force.
(This was exactly the reverse of the ICC’s position, which stressed the need
for the workers’ councils to exert their power over all other institutions in
society!)

At the same time, while accepting the proletarian
character of the Russian Revolution, WV, RP (and the RWG) began to insist that
anyone who didn’t acknowledge that the Bolshevik Party was finished in 1921
(Kronstadt, the NEP, the United Front) had ‘crossed class lines’ and become an
apologist of the counter-revolution. We will discuss the absurdity of this
position later on, but even its absurdity was not without significance. Never
before in the history of the workers’ movement has a question of dates, of
retrospective historical interpretation, been made into a class frontier.
The only possible explanation for the intransigence with which WV, RP, and RWG
defended their position on ‘1921’ is that they saw this date as a kind of
‘cordon sanitaire’ protecting them from any possible connection with the
degeneration of Bolshevism. It was as though they were trying to allay their
lingering suspicions about accepting the Bolshevik Party as part of their own
history by saying ‘thus far, but no further’. They had moved from a councilist
position to a more coherent one, close to that of the ICC, but as have said,
they had not assimilated a coherent method of analysing the mistakes and even
crimes of the past workers’ movement, nor its approach to the problem of the
degeneration and death of proletarian organizations.

2.The WV/RP
confusions about regroupment and organization were again closely linked to their
fears of ‘Leninism’ and ‘Bolshevism’. This was particularly marked with WV, who
for a long time considered that any talk of regroupment today was
‘substitutionist’. Though they later changed this position (without ever
explaining why), the issue of regroupment was never fully clarified in the CWO,
as we shall see. Parallel to this hostility to regroupment there was the
above-mentioned suspicion about the very idea of the party, and unease about
the concept of centralization. WV’s ideas about organization were more or less
federalist: each group was autonomous and had its own intervention to do in its
own corner of the world. The prospect of being absorbed into a larger international
body filled them with anxiety. RP accepted the idea of regroupment and
centralization more easily, but their understanding of the implications of this
was severely limited. This was demonstrated, for example, by their idea of
entering the current as a bloc that had its own platform within the
organization. And their subsequent shift from this semi-federalist conception
to an extreme monolithism, in which regroupment was impossible until there was
absolute agreement on every conceivable point, was further evidence that they
had never really understood the concept of centralization. In general neither
WV nor RP ever abandoned the idea that they had to make their own unique
contribution to the workers’ movement, that they themselves had worked out and
clarified the essentials of a revolutionary platform. True, they said, the international
current had helped them quite a bit, but the main achievement was their own.
They had pulled themselves out of leftism by their own bootstraps.

The truth was somewhat different. Neither RP, nor WV,
nor the CWO has ever made a systematic critique of their own past, but if they
had done so, they would have come to some uncomfortable conclusions. While
discussion between revolutionaries is never a monologue, and both sides gained
mutually from the debates that took place in Britain, a
cursory look at the facts will leave us in no doubt about who was the main
source of clarification. The current already had a clear platform before these
discussions took place: that of RI’s Declaration of Principles in 1968 and the
platform in 1972. When RP and WV began discussing with the current, they were
deeply confused on absolutely vital questions like the shop stewards, the
Russian Revolution, decadence, organization, the Left Communist movement, etc,
etc. The clear positions they moved towards were positions that the
current already defended; what they considered later on to be evidence of their
superior clarity (1921, the state, etc) were, in the main, confusions,
which they never managed to surmount. The result was that the platforms of WV,
RP, and the CWO, are essentially watered-down versions of the ICC platform,
with the addition of their own hobbyhorses.

Without the intervention of the international current,
it is somewhat doubtful as to whether WV and RP would have arrived at a
relatively clear political perspective. Once again, we are not asserting this
merely to add to the prestige of the ICC. We are simply reaffirming the fact
that historical circumstances led to the international current being the first
to elaborate a coherent political platform, and thus endowed it with a
particular responsibility in the development of other groups. Neither RP nor WV
could ever bear to admit this fact. Their desire to defend their autonomy and
to develop their ‘own’ ideas prevented them from seeing the need for communists
to unite their efforts and to regroup into a single organization.

But the failings of WV and RP cannot explain the whole
story. We are not dealing with autonomous psychological problems here: the
hesitations, confusions, and fears of WV/RP were very much a historical
product of the immaturity of the revolutionary movement. And this immaturity
also affected the international current, and hindered its own efforts at
constituting a pole of regroupment.

As we have seen, the groups of the international
current, while having a more coherent view of the organizational question in general
terms, took some time to draw all the practical conclusions from this overall
understanding. This applies both to their internal structure and to the
question of regroupment, both of which are aspects of centralization. Only
gradually did it become clear that it was necessary today to build an
internationally centralized organization of revolutionaries, which in turn
would be a moment in the reconstitution of the world communist party in a
period of heightened class struggle. Although it imposed its general clarity on
the discussions with the other groups, the international current failed to pose
the vital questions of regroupment from the beginning. It did not insist soon
enough that the purpose of the discussion and cooperation between groups in Britain was
the fusion of the different elements into a single international organization.

When differences between the groups emerged, the
current did not always respond in a politically adequate manner, and this was
fundamentally the result of its inexperience in dealing with such problems. The
development of new groups is an extremely delicate process which requires,
alongside an intransigent defence of general political positions, a great deal
of flexibility and patience on the part of the more developed group. This is
not to say that the whole problem would have been avoided if the current had
been more ‘tactful’ – after a point even the tact and friendliness of the
current were interpreted as manifestations of unprincipled opportunism. But
when the revolutionary movement is small and immature, secondary and even
personal problems can have an effect out of all proportion to their real
importance. This means that the way political discussion is conducted is
a matter of considerable interest. It is especially necessary to separate
secondary issues from the main ones, and to conduct discussion on a strictly political
level, without getting lost in the minutia of inter-group psychology.

The international current’s lack of experience in
conducting such discussions was compounded by the fact that it did not yet have
the organizational means to steer the debate to a successful conclusion.
Because the current did not yet exist as a single, unified organization, it had
no way of elaborating a fully consistent and global orientation for relating to
other groups. For the same reason it was difficult for other groups to see it
as a pole of regroupment when it had no common platform and no unified organizational
structure. Groups like the RWG actually chided it for not being centralized,
failing to understand that centralization was a process which could not
be proclaimed overnight. The whole perspective of the current was that it
should move towards a single international organization. But the fact that it
had not yet reached this stage was to weight heavily on its early attempts to
regroup with other elements. Moreover, the ‘birth’ of the ICC was accompanied
by inevitable birth-pangs which gave rise to a number of defections as
mentioned above.

“This period of deepening understanding in the
Current undoubtedly disturbed all our international contacts. To see the
organization to some extent split apart by violent polemic (particularly with
the modernist Tendance Communiste within RI) did not inspire confidence in
those who were in any case permeated with a fear of organization connected to
‘anti-Leninism’. It is difficult to integrate other elements into an
organization during its particularly painful birth” (from the ICC text,
‘Lessons of Regroupment’).

If one compares the failure of regroupment with RP and
WV in Britain
with the successful regroupment that took place a year later in Belgium, it
immediately becomes clear how important the existence of the Current as a
unified body was. The three groups that began discussing revolutionary
positions in Belgium
started off with many of the problems the groups in Britain had
faced: different backgrounds, an uneven development towards the politics of the
ICC, etc. But this time the ICC not only existed as such; it had also learned
from its negative experiences in Britain,
and was able to situate the discussions in a coherent framework from the
beginning. It was able to minimize secondary questions and patiently assist all
the groups to arrive at the same level of understanding. It was made clear all
along that the purpose of discussion was the unification of the different
elements into a single international organization; and the ICC was able to
present itself as such an organization. In fact it soon became clear to the
Belgian comrades that the ICC was the only organization capable of providing a
framework for international regroupment. The intervention of the PIC and the
CWO in this process simply revealed their preoccupation with attacking the ICC
and obstructing any unification in the revolutionary movement. The constitution
of Internationalisme as the Belgian section of the ICC, together with other
successful regroupments in Canada, Italy,
and Spain,
were evidence that the ICC had surmounted many of its earlier difficulties and
was beginning to show a real capacity to act as a pole of clarification and
regroupment.

It is unfortunate that many of the bitter lessons that
the ICC learned about regroupment, such as the need to situate discussion in a
global framework, the need for a unified international organization, etc, were
learned through a negative experience in Britain.
But then defeat has always been the school of the proletarian movement. The
conditions that led to the formation of the CWO were above all a product of a
particular phase in the reconstitution of the revolutionary movement, and will
probably not repeat themselves. In this sense, the CWO is an anomaly left over
from a period that is now behind us. This is underlined by the subsequent
positive growth of the ICC, and the increasing isolation and fragmentation of
the CWO.

THE ISOLATION OF THE CWO

Since its formation, the CWO has more and more
retreated into a shell of misanthropic sectarianism. The main role it has
played has been that of confusing elements moving towards communist positions,
bewildering them with its obsessive emphasis on the ‘differences’ it has with
the ICC. After all, what could be more confusing for people who are only just
learning what real class positions are, what the real difference between
a communist group and a leftist group is, to find a whole new set of
‘additional’ class lines presented to them? It is rather difficult at this
state to assess the amount of damage the CWO had done to the emerging
revolutionary movement. We have mentioned their negative role in the
regroupment process in Belgium. In
Britain,
they have succeeded in derailing a few individuals into their isolationist
fox-hole. Not to mention the fact that the militants of the CWO have removed themselves
from the mainstream of the revolutionary movement, and thus have robbed
themselves of making the contribution to the movement promised by their earlier
development.

But it would be quite wrong to over-estimate the
(negative) influence of the CWO. In many instances they have failed to convince
newly emerging revolutionaries that their stance ‘against the ICC’ is based on
serious political criteria (the groups in Belgium,
for example, and with certain comrades in Britain).
And since their sectarian attitude is no longer directed at the ICC alone, they
have found it difficult to maintain contact with a number of other groups, let
alone regroup with them. The attitude they took up towards the PIC is typical.The CWO demanded that the PIC simply abandon
its position on the crisis, based on Luxemburg’s analysis, as a minimum
precondition for regroup (see WR 5, ‘An Incomplete Regroupment’). A
similar sectarian approach was adopted towards a group in Gothenburg, Sweden, which
was attempting to move away from anarchism: the CWO’s response to the group’s
platform was not to make a criticism of its confusions, but to write a ringing
attack on the historical anarchist movement (see ‘Anarchism’ in RP 3),
and insist that the Gothenburg group reply to this attack before any further
dialogue could take place! Not surprisingly neither the PIC nor the Swedish
group were prepared to accept the CWO’s ‘purist’ ultimatum.

Other international contacts have similarly led
nowhere. The CWO had a brief flirtation with the French group, Union Ouvriere,
a split-off from the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvriere. Although the CWO correctly
encouraged UO’s early efforts to move towards revolutionary positions, they
underestimated the difficulties of making a complete break with a
counter-revolutionary organizational past on an overall political level. The
CWO’s desperate search for other revolutionary contacts once they had
arbitrarily cut themselves off from the ICC and anything and anywhere in
contact with it, led them to harbour illusions about the actual clarity of UO
and to throw themselves into a heady proclamation that UO was on the road to
victory before, unfortunately, all the battles were won.

In any case the CWO’s ‘political dialogue’ with UO
seems to have ended in embarrassed silence since the latter has now fragmented
into a number of modernist sects. The collapse of the CWO’s relationship with
the American RWG, described in the early days of the CWO as the group that was
closest to it (WV 15), was also passed over in silence. Being ‘close’ to
the CWO wasn’t enough to prevent the RWG from getting thoroughly demoralized
and dissolving itself (see WR 5, ‘An Incomplete Regroupment’). After
briefly resurrecting itself as the ‘Proletarian Communist Group’, the vestiges
of the RWG finally fused with a strange Chicago club called the ‘Committee for
a Workers’ Council’ to form a ridiculous semi-modernist sect called ‘Forward’.
Forward thinks that the whole historical workers’ movement from Marx to the
Bolsheviks and the Communist Left was just the “left wing of Capital”, and that
the defensive struggles of the class (which Forward contemptuously and
erroneously identifies with “collective bargaining”) should not happen. Their
paper is mainly devoted to windy attacks on both the ICC and… the CWO!

The breakdown of these international contacts
emphasized the isolation of the CWO: its inability to offer any real
perspective for the regroupment of revolutionaries. Although it has so far
failed to draw up any balance sheet of these attempts at regroupment, this
series of failures must have produced tensions within the organization. As we
have seen, the seceding Liverpool
section gave as one of its reasons for secession the CWO’s intolerant attitude
to other groups. When a group is turned in on itself like the CWO, immense
internal pressure inevitably builds up, leading to sudden and unexplained
defections and splits.

The pressure inside the CWO has been further increased
by the group’s monolithic character: its insistence on total agreement on all
possible points of the platform, its refusal to a allow minority positions. As
we predicted in WR 6, this monolithic conception of organization “will
lead not just to two organizations, but an unending series of splits, expulsions,
denunciations, and breaking off of relations, which can be expected to clarify
the communist programme no more than the CWO’s present break with the ICC has
done” (‘The CWO and the Organization Question’).

This monolithism never allowed differences within the CWO
to emerge and be debated publicly, or according to the ‘seceders’, within the
organization itself. This can only serve to drive real differences underground
and creates a stifling atmosphere inside a group; but at the same time the CWO
was unable to dispense with a monolithic structure. Originating in an
over-reaction to the initial federalism of RP and WV, the CWO’s monolithism
became a vital protecting device ensuring the uniqueness of the CWO’s platform
and sealing the CWO off from other groups.

But it is also quite clear that this monolithic
structure never really eliminated the fragility of the original regroupment
between WV and RP. This is admitted by the CWO itself, in its recent letter to
the ICC: “In the future we will have to be more careful in our dealings with
elements who give out that they agree with our politics, but who seek to use us
either as a life-raft to keep them afloat, or as a shield against another
political organization.”

Underneath the apparent unity and “programmatic
centralism” of the CWO, there were still two groups and the Liverpool
group’s acceptance of the CWO’s professed political perspectives seems to have
been fairly superficial, judging from its easy regression back to the localist,
activist politics of the old WV. The joint organization was an artificial
creation from the beginning, constructed on an entirely inadequate political
basis, as a kind of negative mirror image of the ICC. The split was therefore
written into the group from the beginning, and unless the CWO radically changes
its present orientation, its points to further disintegratory tendencies in the
future.

Another consequence of the CWO’s isolation is an
accumulation of confusions and political misconceptions, which (in the absence
of discussion with anybody else) don’t get clarified, but serve as further
justifications of the ‘uniqueness’ of the CWO. For now one example will
suffice: in RP 5 we find the incredible assertion that neither the July 19, 1936
uprising in Barcelona,
nor the Barcelona May Days of 1937, were expressions of proletarian struggle.
This view is totally at odds with the position defended by Bilan (see
the appeal of the Communist Left published in the International Review,
no. 6) and actually obscures the whole significance of what happened in Spain,
particularly the role of the ‘extreme left’ which had such an important role to
play in Spain precisely because the proletarian danger had been acutely felt by
the Spanish bourgeoisie. We don’t wish to go into this question in detail here.
We cite it as an example of the way the CWO’s isolation both from today’s
revolutionary movement and from the tradition of the Communist Left is leading
it to adopt more and more bizarre and unsubstantiated positions. The CWO
continues to defend class positions, and remains within the proletarian camp;
its political degeneration is taking place quite slowly. But the proliferation
of confusions within its ranks will inevitably accelerate this tendency towards
theoretical degeneration, which is becoming increasingly apparent.

Political currents and reference:

Development of proletarian consciousness and organisation:

Breaking with Spartacusbond (Holland)

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Introduction

The
following article was written by a Dutch comrade who has left the
Spartacusbond (SB). The article is composed from various texts
written in preparation for the last confer­ence of the SB and
serves as a parting letter to this organization. The aim of the
present article is to clarify the developments within the SB to the
outside world and, in doing so, to contribute to the process of
international regroupment. This concern for the inter­national
regroupment of revolutionaries has led FK to join the ICC,
considering it to be “the
only serious pole of international regroupment of revolutionaries
today.”

Spartacusbond: Alone in the world

Since
the second half of the 1960s, the workers’ struggle has taken on an
openly revolutionary character once more. At the same time,
revolutionary nuclei are emerging which try to understand the crisis
of capit­alism and the revival of the workers’ strug­gle.
In doing so these revolutionary groups lay the foundations necessary
for taking up propagandistic activities, as did organiza­tions of
revolutionaries which emerged during the first revolutionary wave of
the world proletariat following the imperialist massacre of 1914-18.
Such attempts are very diffic­ult since fifty years of
counter-revolution have led to an organic break not only with those
communist parties which organized to form the Third International,
but also with those who remained faithful to the world revolution
after the Third International and the Bolshevik Party had degenerated
and dis­integrated. It is thus natural that the revolutionary
groups emerging in recent years should engage in intense political
discus­sion in order to re-appropriate the histori­cal
political gains of the working class, to clarify class positions, and
to regroup internationally on the basis of a platform in which class
positions have been elaborated. The ICC is an expression of the
theoretical and organizational efforts of those revolu­tionary
groups which have become conscious of the fact that they can only
carry out their responsibilities in the working class within an
international framework.

This
effort is not immediately understood by everyone. Moreover, the
numerous existing counter-revolutionary organizations contri­bute
to derailing this effort. They have the doubtful honour, with hardly
an excep­tion, of being able to claim a living and organic
continuity with currents which, one by one, have revealed themselves
to be the executioners of the working class: for example, the
Trotskyist/Stalinist/and Maoist products of the degeneration of the
Third International and the Bolshevik Party. Like a bad penny they
keep turning up in myriad forms. Counter-revolutionary groups are not
threatened by a downturn in the workers’ struggle. On the contrary,
they are bourg­eois expressions and contribute to acceler­ating
any reflux. Their mystifications con­sist of presenting defeats
of the workers’ struggle as victories. In the context of the trade
unions such defeats are called ‘a growth in unity’;.
relapses
into parlia­mentarism become ‘political struggles’; relapses
into nationalism are presented as ‘proletarian internationalism’;
and the workers’ involvement in imperialist war is portrayed as the
defence of some ‘socialist country’.

The
role of bourgeois, counter-revolutionary organizations is clear. But
within the proletarian
camp,
is the effort towards inter­national regroupment understood by
the descendants of the Dutch and Italian Left; with­in those
groups which are not the result of today’s revival of class
struggle, but which were able to maintain a revolutionary stance
towards certain vital problems which faced the class struggle in the
past? Do such groups represent the living, unbroken, organic
continuity with the revolutionary currents of the revolutionary wave
of 1917-­20? In other words, do they defend class positions and
do they carry out their tasks as revolutionary organizations with
regard to the class? These questions cannot be answered in a bloc. In
the following,
article we will examine the case of the Spartacusbond, a Dutch
organization which is sometimes considered to be the organic
continuation of the Dutch and German Left of the 1920s, 1930s, and
1940s.

The
origins of the Spartacusbond

When
the Communistenbond ‘Spartacus’ (League of Communists
‘Spartacus’) re-emerged from illegality after world War II, many
members of the pre-war GIC1
appeared to be part of this former Trotskyist group. Originally the
Spartacusbond was one of the illegal groups continuing the work of
the RSAP of Sneevliet (Maring). In the second imperia­list
massacre, it held a coherent proletar­ian internationalist
position by refusing to take sides in the imperialist war and
de­fended working class struggle. The later Spartacus faction
evolved particularly posi­tively toward class positions by
further abandoning Trotskyist positions. It under­stood the
capitalist nature of the Soviet Union; rejected trade unionism;
recognized factory committees as the organs of struggle of the
working class; denounced parliamentarism; and insisted on the
political nature of the struggle in the factories. The Spartacus
group was further stimulated in its development by the former GIC,
with whom it came into contact after the arrest and execution of
Sneevliet and seven other comrades in 1943. The study and discussion
of theoretical questions between the former Trotskyists and the GIC
members evolved so positively that they decided to continue as
Communistenbond ‘Spartacus’, which openly defended class
positions in the Netherlands after World War II.

The
end of World War II did not bring about the proletarian revolution
contrary to expectations based on the events in Germany and Russia
following World War I. Instead capitalism began its period of
reconstruc­tion into which it could attempt to inte­grate the
working class in general. The Eenheidsvakcentrale (United Trade
Union), which the Spartacus group had contributed to creating during
its final years of ille­gality, and which the Spartacists hoped,
through their propaganda for factory organization, would evolve in
the direction of a kind of Arbeiter-Union of the German Revolution,
in fact became an ordinary trade union and on top of that fell into
Stalinist hands.

They
then founded the Onafhankelijke Verbond van Bedrijfsorganisaties
(Independent Alliance of Factory Organizations) which although it was
not dominated by the Sta­linists nevertheless also became a kind
of trade union, given the pressures of the reconstruction period.
After this, the Spartacists left the OVB. With the decrease in the
number of wildcat strikes immediately following World War II, the SB
entered a difficult period. Many members left and it became a small
group desperately trying to row against the stream in the reflux of
the workers’ struggle. Their dissemination of class positions found
no audience because of the lack of movement in the class.
In­evitably, the SB tried to account for this, but it fell into a
gradual theorizing of the defeat. This process expressed itself, for
example, in the emergence of a council­ist faction within the SB
which started to publish Daad
en Gedachte (Act
and Thought) independently from the SB in 1965.

Councilism

Councilism2,
as a current emerging from the reconstruction period, must be
disting­uished from the pre-war Left Communists.The germs of
councilism, a product of degen­eration after the war, can be
found in some pre-war currents within the German and Dutch Left. This
is particularly so in regard to the council communism of Otto Ruhle’s
Einheidsorganisation (Unity Organization) and in the council
communism of the GIC. Both these currents, however, were still an
expression of the serious attempts made to clarify problems around
the question of the Arbeiter-Union (Workers’ Union) prior to the
war. Therefore, we call them council communists and not councilists.
Although Otto Ruhle’s rejection of the need for political
organization and the party was already at the time a mistake, we must
understand his position in terms of the confusion which also existed
in the KAPD over the question of the Arbeiter-Union. Only gradually
was the insight gained that the working class could no longer have
per­manent organizations. This insight came to be expressed in
the conceptions of the GIC. The council communism of the GIC must
there­fore also be distinguished from that of Ruhle.

Councilism,
on the other hand, bases itself on fragments of the council communism
of the GIC and particularly that of Otto Ruhle. Councilism must not
be seen as an attempt to clarify the real problems arising from class
struggle. Quite the opposite. It falls
back
to Ruhle’s rejection of political organization at a time when the
questions raised about the organs of struggle and their position in
relation to the political organization had already been clarified by
the GIC. CounciIism thus neglects
a
funda­mental lesson drawn from the workers’ struggle.
Councilists take a lot of pains to project their positions back to
encompass revolutionaries like Pannekoek. Daad
en Gedachte (D&G)
even suggest that it is the continuation of the GIC since all the
ex-­GIC members of the SB, became members of D&G in 1965. But
the continuation of a revolutionary current is not guaranteed by the
presence of certain people in an organ­ization. A revolutionary
current can only be maintained within the framework of an
organization which publicly propagates class positions. This
certainly cannot be said of D&G.
On the contrary, D&G
considers the propagation of class positions to be a ‘party
practice’, which in the councilist vocabulary refers to the Social
Democratic and Leninist position on the tasks of the party. The
councilists completely overlook the fact that, since the foundation
of the KAPD in 1920, revolutionaries defend the position that the
tasks of the party are res­tricted to propaganda and to the
clarifica­tion of consciousness, while the task of leading the
struggle and taking power is to be accomplished by the struggling
masses which use their elected committees for this purpose. This
conception, of the urgent task of the party to intervene in the class
strug­gle in an exclusively propagandistic manner, is a class
line. It is a fundamental lesson which the KAPD learned from the
practices of the reformist parties and trade unions and the
perpetuation of such practices by the ‘Zentrale’ of the KPD(S)
following the Moscow ‘lead’3.
Otto Ruhle turned away from the KAPD because, according to him, it
was financed by Moscow and was following a Leninist line. Gorter,
Hempel, and Pannekoek, on the contrary, disapproved of Ruhle’s
position because they were convinced that the most conscious workers,
necessarily, first come together to study and discuss and then spread
their positions through the entire class.

The
councilists think they have found an additional argument4
against the propa­gandistic tasks of the party in the fact that
class positions are grounded in the creative activity of the
struggles of the working class instead of being developed
independently by armchair theorists contem­plating their navels.
Indeed, class positions are the result of the study of workers’
struggle by the working class. Therefore, class positions change when
the class strug­gle encounters opposition from a new obsta­cle
and succeeds in creatively surmounting it. For that reason the
councilists think it better not to propagate positions today which,
in the future, might turn out to be limited. Secondly, they feel such
activity would come down to an attempt to rob the workers of their
chance of leading their own struggle. This opinion is based on a far
too narrow definition of class positions.

Class
positions are not detailed guide-lines telling the working class how
to act in every given situation. They crystallize the political gains
from the experience of the highlights of the workers’ struggles; as
for example, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution and German
Revolution, or from the counter-revolution: the case of both world
wars. Class frontiers are no more than a general orientation, a broad
frame­work for the conscious action of the class, which can only
be extended by events in the class struggle of world-historic
dimensions. The fear of the councilists, that to propa­gate class
positions comes down to political groups directing the workers’
struggle, is completely misplaced. This fear is even more out of
place when we see that revolut­ionaries have argued since 1920
that the working class, through its struggles, pro­duces two
organizations: the unitary organi­zation and the organization of
revolution­aries.

Since
the outbreak of World War I, capitalism has shown that it has entered
its phase of decadence and revolution. In the period of decadence,
gradual improvements in the position of the working class through
parli­amentary and trade union struggle have become impossible,
because of the lack of real growth of the productive forces. This
means that the working class can no longer unite in permanent
organizations of struggle, organizations like the trade unions and
parliamentary parties used to be. Only during its direct struggles;
in which it defends its immediate interests, can the class form
temporary organizational units. Direct struggles and the independent
unitary organ­izational forms engendered by such struggles always
come up against the impossibility of the working class gaining any
lasting reforms under decadent capitalism. What remains are the
experiences of the struggle, of its organization and its results. In
elaborating these experiences, within the process of the rising
consciousness of the workers through their struggles, about
capitalist relations of production and about their own forms of
organization, the class prepares itself for the fulfillment of its
global historic task: the conscious over­throw of capitalism and
the foundation of workers’ power based on the councils, in order to
realize the communist mode of production. The process by which the
class becomes conscious of its historical task is, therefore, not
some idealistic fantasy which can be injected into the class from the
outside. On the contrary, this consciousness is generated by the
working class elaborating its experiences by engaging in intensive
discussions around various points of view.

In
order to develop and propagandize their positions in the best
possible way, those who hold the same positions unite in poli­tical
organizations of revolutionaries, which are the permanent
expressions of the workers’ struggle, in so far as they are based
on the study of the experiences of that struggle from the point of
view of the working class. Apart from these organizations, there
exist the organizations of struggle, developing towards the unity and
independence of the working class against capital. These are
temporary
expressions
of the upsurges in the workers’ struggle. The workers’ councils
become permanent when they have destroyed the bourgeois state.

Leaving
the Spartacusbond

To
understand the distinction between the unitary organs and the
organization of revolutionaries, and also their mutual rela­tionship,
is a fundamental requirement for an organization of revolutionaries
to fulfill its tasks in the class in the best possible way. Only if a
full understanding of this problem is present can we talk about a
living, organic, continuity with the Communist Left of the pre-war
period. D&G
are clearly not a continuation of the Dutch Left, but it would be an
exaggeration to call D&G
a counter-revolutionary group. But what about the SB?

It
is impossible to describe here the com­plete history of the SB.
We will limit ourselves to the remark that the SB was not freed from
councilism after the D&G
faction split from it. D&G,
it is true, is the group which contributed most to the theore­tical
foundations of councilism and subse­quently put it into practice,
even propaga­ting it at an international level. However, there
are traces of councilism in the SB.

An evaluation of the councilist or communist nature
of the SB becomes possible by studying developments at the latest
conference of the SB. This conference was completely dedicated to the
question of the organization of revolutionaries.
The direction of the prac­tical decisions taken at this
conference were for the writer of this article, reason enough to
leave the SB. The considerations produced here are not unknown to the
SB; they can be found in all kinds of papers written in preparation
for the conference, and in letters sent to the SB after it took
place.

At this conference, the councilistic inclin­ation
to view all political/historical gains of the class struggle through
the spectacles of defeat came very strongly to the fore. The
conference, devoted to the question of the organization of
revolutionaries, became necessary because of the faulty manner in
which the SB worked. After publishing two international bulletins,
the SB no longer appeared to be capable of reacting to the different
groups that have recently arisen in the revolutionary milieu. The SB
func­tioned so badly that even internal discus­sion became
impossible. The conference could only have solved these problems by
gaining some insight into the tasks and working procedures of a
political organiza­tion. But the conference showed, alas, that
there was a dreadful confusion in the SB about:

a. international regroupment;

b. the SB’s origins from the German and Dutch Left;

c. the tasks facing an organization of
revolutionaries;

d,
the regroupment of revolutionaries in the Netherlands.

a. International Regroupment

In its report of the conference of 25/26 September, the SB
explains its refusal to develop a platform by, among other things,
the following statement:

“In
a platform (theses) one is obliged to reproduce one’s opinions in
very general terms, because one must say a lot of things in a few
words. Therefore, in practice, a platform can only be understood by
other groups. And it is only useful in that kind of communication.
Spartacus is different: we aren’t interested, firstly, in other
groups.... Those who search for a party-form with other international
groups need a platform, an elaborated declaration to decide if and
with whom one can cooperate.”
(Spartacus,
1976-11)

Well,
at the conference it was never argued that a platform would only, or
even pri­marily, be useful for contacting other groups. Apart
from that, we must conclude from this quotation that the SB thinks
that it is the only revolutionary organization in the world, or else
it considers contact between these organizations of no importance.
This isolationism shown by the SB is clearly not an acquisition from
the Dutch Left, as is shown by the following facts:

1.
When Gorter and Pannekoek left the Dutch Social Democratic Party in
1908 to found a new, marxist, social democratic party, they made very
sure that the new party would be organized in the Second
International. During this same period, Pannekoek was also active in
the left wing of the German Social Democratic Party.

2.
During the first imperialist massacre, particularly Gorter actively
joined in the efforts towards regroupment of the Left at Zimmerwald
which ended with the formation of the Third International.

3.
During the German Revolution, Pannekoek, and Gorter engaged in
passionate discussions within the KPD(S) and the KAPD. Gorter made a
journey to Moscow to defend the positions of the KAPD in the
Executive Committee of the Communist International. After the Third
Congress of the Comintern, when efforts to form an opposition failed,
Gorter became one of the initiators of the Communist Workers’
International.

4.
After the splits in the KAPD and the ‘Union’, Canne Meijer and
Hempel were closely involved in efforts made to regroup German
revolutionaries in the Kommunistische Arbeiter Union.

5.
In the GIC, Canne Meijer, Hempel, and Pannekoek drew out the lessons
from the German and Russian Revolutions while in permanent contact
with comrades in Germany, France, the United States, and Belgium.

6.
After World War II, when the GIC members emerged from illegality as
part of the SB, the SB didn’t hold itself aloof from international
discussion: contacts existed in Germany, France and Belgium. In this
period the SB also came into contact with the precursors of the ICC.

These
facts clearly illustrate that there would not have been a Dutch Left
had it not developed within the framework of inter­national
discussions, both within the Second and Third Internationals, and
among the international contacts after the degen­eration of the
Third International. The working class and its struggles don’t stop
at national frontiers. On the contrary, it forms a unity spanning all
the national capitals. It has to do this because its starting-point
and the object of its strug­gle -- capitalism -- is organized
internation­ally at the level of the world market. Two world wars
and two waves of international workers’ struggle, that of 1917-20
and the present one, have made this clear. The international nature
of the workers’ strug­gle also means that the various
organiza­tions of revolutionaries cannot lock them­selves
behind national boundaries and thus study and discuss the struggle
within such a limited framework. But, on the contrary,
revolutionaries must lay the foundation for international
regroupment.

Unfortunately,
it is characteristic of the isolationism of the SB not to invite
other groups to its conference in order “to
prevent the discussions from centering too much around the positions
of the various groups”
(Spartacus,
1976-11). Before the conference the argument against inviting other
groups was that the work of the conference would constitute a
pre-condition and a basis for a systematic discussion of the
positions of the several groups. But when “a
very deviating position”
(Ibid)
was proposed at the conference, namely, to translate the platforms of
several foreign groups (for example, that of the CWO, the PIC, the
RWG, and Arbetarmakt in so far as they weren’t already translated
as was the platform of the ICC ), and after that to study and
evaluate them, this proposal was rejected. One must fear that at
future conferences of the SB no other groups will be present. The
SB’s self-chosen isolation in the face of the re-emerging
internation­al class struggle and all the questions emerging from
this will lead them to an increasingly dogmatic position. If the SB
remains cut off from international contact, the progress of the new
revolutionary wave will wash it ashore, in the bourgeois camp.

b. The Origins of the SB from the German and
Dutch Left

The
SB not only refuses to study the plat­forms of currently existing
groups, it also refuses to examine the programmes of the
organizations from which it emerged: the KPD(S), the KAPD, the KAPN
(Dutch KAP), the GIC, and even its own programme of 1945. Its
argument is that ‘This is all old hat. Now we live in other times.’
But the fact is that nearly everything the SB puts forward consists
of bits of theory deliberately wrenched out of the context of the
overall theory of the German and Dutch Left. Refusing to recognize
this is not only terribly arrogant, it is also dangerous. It is
precisely the uncritical and superficial manner in which the SB
brings forward now this and then that element of the positions of
Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Henk Canne Meijer, or
Hempel which will inevitably bring the SB to the very dogmatic
position it is so afraid of. The only way to arrive at class
positions and to see how eventually they have to be extended or
changed, as a consequence of radical changes in the class struggle,
is to study the fundamental positions of the German and Dutch Left
within the context of the circumstances in which they were developed
and against the background of the present period which separates us
from the pre-war communists. In the first place, the SB isn’t aware
of the totality of the positions of the German and Dutch Left.
Secondly, the SB has never heard about the positions of, for example,
the Italian Left regarding various questions. Thirdly, the SB hasn’t
got the faintest idea what the words ‘class frontier’ mean, from
which it concludes, for reasons of minor importance, that a certain
position ‘out of its time’ is dangerous or even
counter-revolutionary.

The
critical study of the positions on several questions of the German
and Dutch Left and those of existing organizations could have led the
SB to accept a platform. Even the way the SB chose to reject a
platform shows its tendency to bring forward un-reflected fragments
of theory:

“Our
work consists in making our positions clear to people, to struggling
indivi­duals. To put it better, we try to pro­pagate the
class struggle. With a plat­form you run the risk of judging
develop­ments too much from the past, that
you start working conservatively.”
(Spartacus,
1976-11, underlined by F.K)

This is not a new contribution of the SB. No, this is
a portion of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory, as can be seen from the
following quotation:

“In
general, the tactical policy of the Social Democracy is not something
that may be ‘invented’. It is the product of a series of great
creative acts of the often spontaneous class struggle seeking its way
forward. The unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of the
historic process comes before the sub­jective logic of the human
beings who participate in the historic process. The tendency is for
the directing organs of the socialist party to play a conserva­tiverole.
Experience shows that every time the labour movement wins new terrain
those organs work it to the upmost. They transform it at the same
time into a kind of bastion, which holds up advance on a wider
scale.”
(Underlined by Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Organizational Questions of the
Russian Social Democracy’, pt. l)

But
for Rosa Luxemburg this consideration was not a justification for
opposing the existence of a party programme. Some lines further on
she says:

“Evidently,
the important thing for the Social Democracy is not the preparation
of a set of directives all ready for the future policy. It is
important: 1. to encourage a correct historic apprecia­tion of
the forms of struggle correspon­ding to the given situations, and
2. to maintain an understanding of the rela­tivity of the current
phase and the in­evitable increase of revolutionary ten­sion
as the final goal of the class struggle is approached.” (Luxemburg,
Ibid)

Rosa
Luxemburg gives an excellent definition of the origins and functions
of the class positions that are written down in the plat­form or
party programme of every revolution­ary organization. Indeed, to
record class positions has nothing
at all to
do with efforts to take over the leadership of the working class
struggle or (what would be the result of this) obstructing the ‘often
spontaneous class struggle’.

The
text of Rosa Luxemburg, from which these quotations are taken, was
written at a time when the period of capitalist decadence hadn’t
yet begun and the working class could still force by means of
parliament and the trade unions, a still-expanding capitalism to
grant reforms. At that time revolutionaries were active in the Social
Democratic organizations because they were permanent proletarian
organizations of struggle and propaganda. The programme on which the
KAPD was founded in 1920, took into account the period of the
decadence of capitalism, which apparently had started in 1914. It
also explained the marked inade­quacy of parliament and the trade
unions as means of struggle of the proletariat and recognized the
distinction between the unitary organizations of the class and the
organization of revolutionaries. This dis­tinction marks a
continuous theoretical evolution which began with Rosa Luxemburg’s
opposition within Social Democracy. This theoretical evolution is in
no way a result of navel-gazing, but of a thorough elabora­tion
of the developments within the workers’ struggle up to 1920 which
shows a distinc­tion between the organizations of struggle and
the organizations of the revolutionaries in the reality of class
struggle. World War I and the revolutionary wave of 1917-20 shifted
class frontiers, and the programme of the KAPD takes this into
account. If the SB is suggesting that the class frontiers described
in the programme of the KAPD have changed, through claiming they are
‘old hat’, then the SB’s responsibility is to show the historic
facts proving this. It is our con­viction that these facts do not
exist. But the SB has very good reasons for refusing to study the
programmes and platforms of the KAPD and its continuations in the
Dutch Left. At present the SB is only held to­gether by its
councilist and activist re­fusal to take up its tasks as an
organiza­tion of revolutionaries. The councilists, the older
militants in the SB, gave up bringing forward class positions after
the disappointing experiences which followed their efforts to do so
during the now-ended period of reconstruction. The younger acti­vists
in the SB -- in a functioning organiza­tion of revolutionaries --
are afraid to give up the safe, localistic, limitations of their own
place of work or their own dis­trict, and at the theoretical
level, prefer their ‘chats’ with the workers.

c.
The Tasks of the Organization of Revolutionaries

During
the conference, the SB couldn’t deny the distinction between the
organization of revolutionaries and the unitary organiza­tions.
But this was arrived at only after the greatest effort and in spite
of objec­tions of a kind that can also be found in the report of
the conference the SB pub­lished:

“But
the conception that the political organization is so schematically
distinct from the unitary organization that in practice it even boils
down to a separa­tion, doesn’t fit in with reality. In the
first place it hardly ever happens that only direct and immediate
interests are in the focus of a struggle or action. Precisely in the
concrete struggle, interests and ideas develop which trans­cend
the material, temporary, and local point of struggle. It is precisely
here that the basis for further political evolution is laid. And in
the second place, in many movements there is no unity of class but
the co-operation of the interests concerned dominates (for example,
actions in workers’ districts). There must be an evolution by
unitary organizations and action groups towards study and the
deepening of more general questions: an evolution from practice
towards study of that practice. Of course the political group is
distinct from the action groups and strike committees. Because the
political group has a speci­fic task of placing the experiences
gained through these struggles in a broader perspective.”
(Spartacus,
1976-11)

Now
what the SB says here is very correct.

But
it is no argument at all against the necessity for the organization
of revolu­tionaries to be a political organization based on a
platform. Because consciousness develops within the struggle from
experiences, this is no automatic and simultaneous process. That’s
why the elements which first come to consciousness must come together
to deepen and propagate their understanding and positions. The SB
seems to confirm this when it says:

“A
platform consists of one’s positions written down in the form of
theses. Posi­tions relating to the history of class struggle, to
actual and international experiences, to capitalism and the
per­spectives for the future. Everybody is agreed that these are
things which a political group such as the SB should be engaged in.
There has been a great deal of discussion about this and also a lot
of confusion, but in this report we can be brief about it; everybody
agreed and still agrees.” (Spartacus,
1976-11)

But
what was the disagreement at the con­ference? According to the
SB: “The
dis­agreement was around the need to reproduce one’s positions
in the form of theses and on the emphasis placed on studying a
certain point.”
(Spartacus,
1976-11)

Of course the disagreement wasn’t about the form
a platform should take, whether theses, an essay, a poem, or a
declaration of prin­ciples. The disagreement was, and is, about
the content of a
platform, a declaration of principles, or whatever you wish to call
it. This is shown by the following: “If we want
to accomplish our tasks, namely to pro­pagate the insight
resulting from study, then we need a permanent discussion. The
evolution of many groups has shown in practice that a platform (along
with its consequences -- national guidelines which local sections
have to obey, months of discussion about the formulation of
objectives and procedures, etc) only obstructs that permanent
confron­tation with reality.” (Spartacus,
1976-11)

By
‘reality’, the SB means the “everyday
practice”
of the activist who has chosen a certain “field
of action”,
this means for a partial struggle, and who doesn’t want to hear
anything about matters which, according to him, have nothing to do
with this. If he has chosen a certain workers’ district, he doesn’t
want to hear about wage struggles, nor about struggles in the
districts of Soweto, or Vitoria, or Gdansk, and least of all about
the class positions elaborated from the highlights of the workers’
struggles historically.

The
activists are characterized by their factual refusal of the
organization of revolutionaries, which they wrongly identify with the
Leninist party. The activists think ‘the’ political organization
superfluous because they demand that political positions be directly
applicable to their “field
of action”.
The positions resulting from past revolutionary highlights of the
workers’ struggle, or from other countries, they consider to be
“theory”
and hence “impractical”.
Activism in fact is an a-historic, localist tendency principally
restricting itself to partial struggles. At its best, activism can be
the reflection of a limited workers’ struggle. But activism can
never help to transcend these limitations. On the contrary, it
propagates the limitations of the partial struggle by holding it up
before the class as exemplary.

While
the working class as a class is always forced to generalize its
struggle to all aspects of life and throughout a constantly enlarging
part of itself, in order to make its proletarian revolution, it is
confronted by the same kind of problems that earlier revolutions had
to overcome. The activists stand there rejecting the experiences of
earlier revolutionary highlights which have been elaborated and are
formulated in the positions of the currents of the workers’
movement. Just like Lenin, the activists consider these theoretical
conceptions as something which are properly alien to the working
class, which according to them, only struggle on the basis of limited
interests -- to which Lenin adds -- and which never can transcend
this limitation without the leading role of the intelligensia. The
activists con­clude from this, differing from the Leninists, that
‘the’ political organization is super­fluous. In doing so
they find themselves in the company of the councilists who no longer
believe in propagating class positions be­cause they are tired of
rowing against the reflux of the class movement during the last fifty
years of counter-revolution. Leninists, activists, and councilists
all agree, despite their other differences, in their denial of the
origins of class positions from the historical workers’ struggle.
Hence their rejection of the exclusively propagandistic intervention
in the working class by the organization of revolutionaries.

The
propagandistic intervention seems after all, only completely natural
and necessary if one thinks that the positions are elabor­ated
from the experiences of the class it­self and that propaganda is
a contribution to the elaboration of those experiences with­in
the class, a contribution to the discus­sion in the working
class.

A
nice illustration of the SB’s tendency to consider class positions
as products of navel-gazing theorists are the marginal notes in
Spartacus,
1976-10 which is completely dedicated to the workers’ struggle in
Poland during the winter of 1970-71 and the summer of 1976. About the
author of the Poland edition, the SB remarks:

“He
is ... himself not free from party conceptions, conceptions which
should be distinguished from those which corres­pond to
state-capitalist theories in which the party ‘leads’ or ‘uses’
the working class; a party which has to seize state-power.
Nevertheless, the author has the conception of a party which puts
forward the aim of the strug­gle -- the conquest of workers’
power -- and which always stimulates the workers to prepare
themselves in every aspect of struggle for that ultimate goal. We get
the impression that, through having these conceptions, he overlooks
the im­mensely important fact that the working class will not
permit its struggle to be directed by social ideals, but that the
working class is inspired by the social reality it experiences.”
(Spartacus,
1976-12)

As
if the final object of the struggle, the conquest of workers’
power, is an ‘invention’ of the party! Even in the earlier years
of scientific socialism the conquest of workers’ power was not the
product of pure thought but a conclusion drawn from the historic,
materialist inquiry into the essence and development of capitalism.
And, at least since the Russian Revolution, the conquest of workers’
power is a fact of experience. For the workers of Szczecin during the
winter of 1970-71, workers’ power was not an unknown fact; they
held power over the city in their hands for some time: This power was
snatched away from them by Gierek’s arrival at the shipyards. The
discussions between the Szczecin workers’ council and Gierek and
among the workers themselves (which is reproduced at length in
Spartacus
1976-10),
centred around the question of the “maintenance
of workers’ power, or the handing of power over to Gierek in
exchange for the satisfaction of demands.”
In this respect Poland is a testing-ground for the position of the SB
in a revolutionary situation:

“So
it is our opinion that the workers of Szczecin and of some other
towns in Poland were not able to bring down Eastern-European state
capitalism. This need not be more surprising than the final defeat of
the revolts in East Germany in 1953 and that of the Hungarian workers
in 1956. In their isolation they were too restricted in their
possibilities to allow for the complete conquest of power by those
workers.”
(Spartacus,
1976-12)

d. The Regroupment of Revolutionaries in Holland

Given
the revival of the revolutionary workers’ struggle after fifty
years of counter-revolution, the SB’s councilist tendency to view
all events through the glasses of defeat, turns into the open
pro­paganda of defeat. The recent workers’ struggles in Poland
are not isolated pheno­mena behind the Iron Curtain, but are part
of the international workers’ struggle since the second half of the
sixties: France in ‘68, Belgium ‘'73, Portugal ‘74/5, Spain,
and again Poland 1976. Not to mention the struggles in other parts of
the world. It is the task of revolutionaries always
to
propa­gate class positions. Once this was also the opinion of the
SB:

“Only
when the third opposition group left the ranks of the SB, did it
become clear that the second and also the third split-off really did
have principled reasons for doing so. The real disagree­ment was
about the SB’s position in the present workers’ movement, at
a time
when, according to those who split off, there could be no
revolutionary mass movements -- or if there could be -- these would
not have a revolutionary character. The opinion of those former
comrades was that the SB, while sticking to propaganda calling for
‘all power to the workers’ councils’, ‘production in the
hands of the factory organizations’ and ‘communist production on
the basis of calculating prices on the basis of the average working
hour’5,
should not intervene in the struggle of the workers as they appeared
in an immediate context. The propaganda of the SB should have to be
of a princi­pled purity and if the masses were not interested at
the moment, this would change when the mass movements would again
become revolutionary.”
(Uit Eigen Kring, end 1947)

So
far the summary of the political reasons for the two opposition
groups leaving the SB, by those who remained. The fear of the second
and third opposition groups that the SB would become ‘diluted’ in
the period when the workers’ struggle once more took on a
revolutionary character, has come true. In a period of reviving
revolutionary class struggle it becomes an absolute necessity to
bring forward in the clearest possible way the historic acquisitions
of the class, the class positions. The SB isn’t able to do this. An
organization of revolutionaries which isn’t based on permanent
discussion involving all its members on its fundamental positions,
recorded in a platform, will perish. Because such an organization:

-- is not able to optimally propagate its positions
(since they have not yet been determined) in the class from which
they have been elaborated;

-- has no membership criteria. Thus it either has to
isolate itself from potential new members and die out, or it has to
open its door to all kinds of positions;

-- cannot distinguish itself from ‘competing’
organizations. Thus, it becomes a factor of confusion instead of
clarification in the class struggle.

Conclusion

The
refusal of the SB to inaugurate a discus­sion aimed at forming a
platform, essentially comes down to its refusal to submit to a
rejuvenation cure against the three complaints of old age mentioned
above. The SB has now been in existence for thirty-seven years. But
this alone doesn’t make it the continua­tion of the Dutch Left.
Its confused positions on the question of the organization of
revo­lutionaries, and on its tasks, prove that there has been a
real break in continuity with the pre-war communists. By adopting the
position it chose at its latest conference, it can hardly be
considered to be a func­tioning pole for the regroupment of
revolu­tionaries in Holland. The deepening crisis and the upsurge
in class struggle make regroupment an absolute necessity.

Unlike
the period in which the Dutch Left was active, the Netherlands is now
a highly industrialized country with a fully-developed working class.
This doesn’t imply that the formation of an organization of
revolution­aries in Holland should ever be restricted by national
frontiers. The Dutch economy, especially since the reconstruction
period, is firmly attached to the German economy and the Dutch
bourgeoisie can use Germany’s relatively strong position and its
own rich supply of natural gas to relieve the results of unemployment
by welfare benefits and by stimulating industry through state
interven­tion. Through the phasing-in of the crisis in the
Netherlands, it has been possible until recently, to contain the
workers’ struggles by channeling and detouring them into demands
like the leveling of wage dif­ferentials and nationalizations.
But revolu­tionaries know that although the leveling of wage
differentials and nationalizations may well slow down the crisis, it
will in­evitably return like a boomerang. Recently, the crisis is
being felt harder. The Social Democratic/Christian Democratic
coalition government is starting to attack welfare benefits.
Automatic compensation made to wage-earners to offset inflation is
also being threatened. Slowly the Dutch working class is beginning to
free itself from con­tainment by the trade unions: in 1976 we saw
wildcat strikes in the ports and in the construction industry, two
traditionally militant sectors of the working class. The CP,
Trotskyists, and Maoists played their part as the left support of
Social Democracy. Their tactic was to drive the workers back into the
trade unions, or into alternative mini-trade unions, set up by the
Maoists. They put forward a bourgeois caricature of political
struggle by defending parliamen­tarism, nationalizations, and
national ‘independence’.

In
view of the still weak development of the workers’ struggles in the
Netherlands, the task of the revolutionary organization is to make
the working class aware of the struggles of its class brothers in
those countries which have already been hit by the crisis, and
conscious of the historical perspectives of these struggles. This
means that the formation of an organization of revolutionaries in
Holland can only take place within an international perspective and
therefore an international framework. Consequently, the activity of
the ICC and especially its Belgian section, in relation to the
Netherlands must be applauded.

The
decision of the SB not to engage in a discussion to set up a platform
does not have to be final. All the questions that were discussed at
the last conference will return when the SB tries to formulate a
‘declaration of principles’. If this happens within a framework
of an international discus­sion on the positions of the Communist
Left during the period before World War II and the positions of
existing revolutionary groups, it will certainly be a contribution
towards the creation of a pole for regroup­ment of
revolutionaries in Holland. Above all the SB could make a valuable
international contribution by aiding the revolutionary groups which
emerge towards a critical re­appraisal of the political gains of
the Dutch Left. Because the SB never was, and is not now, alone in
the world.

F.K.

1
GIC – Groep (en) van Internationale Communisten (Groups of
International Communists) can be considered to be a continuation of
the Dutch KAP.

2
We only offer here a critical examination of the councilist
positions on the question of organization. More about this and the
councilist positions on the Russian Revolution and national
‘liberation’ struggles in the International Review no. 2,
‘The Epigones of Councilism’.

3
The Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands was formed by the
majority of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Spartakusbund)
which was maneuvered out of the party as a consequence of its
anti-parliamentarist and anti-trade union positions.

4
This argument, from the theory of knowledge, is formulated by D&G
in its motto: “In every specific act, thinking precedes action.
In the action of the classes or masses the significance of the act,
however, only appears afterwards. Here the action precedes the
understanding.”

For a comparison with Pannekoek’s position,
the interested reader can study a chapter in Worker’s Councils
that, not completely accidentally, is entitled ‘Thought and
Action’. We refer to the following quotation:

“Only when amongst the workers is present
the understanding – at first vaguely – that they have to do
everything on their own, that they themselves have to create the
organization of work, beginning from the factories, will their
actions signify the beginnings of more powerful developments.

The most important role of propaganda is to
awaken this understanding: this is carried out by individuals and
small groups who first attain this understanding.

As difficult as this may be to begin with,
it will become fruitful because, it runs parallel with the line of
the working class’ life experiences. This understanding will thus
illuminate the masses like a torch and guide their first actions.
Where this understanding is lacking (through backward political and
economic circumstances) this evolution will go through many ups and
downs.” (Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils)

5
This position of the GIC was developed by Hempel while he was a
political prisoner. He tried to draw the lessons from the general
experiences of the German and Russian Revolutions, his specific
experiences of the struggles of the shipyard workers in Hamburg, and
his visits to the Soviets near Moscow during the Third Congress of
the Comintern. The GIC worked out Hempel’s ideas in The Basic
Principles of Communist Production and Distribution (published
in German and Dutch), which is a valuable contribution to the
question of economic aspects of the period of transition.

Heritage of the Communist Left:

Political currents and reference:

Development of proletarian consciousness and organisation:

Correspondence with Combate (Portugal)

2749 reads

We
are publishing below a letter from the Combate group in Portugal. In
order to understand and dispel the misunderstandings which have
arisen in our relations with this group some explanations are
required.

In
the midst of the tremendous confusion in which the events in Portugal
took place after the fall of the Salazar-Caetano regime, Combate
appeared
to be the only group situa­ting itself on a class terrain. For
this reason we always tried to establish and main­tain contact
with this group -- by going to see them, by inviting those comrades
respon­sible for making visits to come to Paris to debate with us
the problems affecting the proletarian struggle in Portugal, and,
equally, by carrying on the debates and criticisms in our
publications – natural activities between revolutionary groups.

Our
divergences with Combate
are
certainly substantial. That is no reason to pass over them in silence
or to be content to simply exchange ‘information’, but, on the
contrary, it is the duty of any revolutionary group to discuss and
openly confront these diver­gences. This is a condition for
managing to clarify these divergences and eventually to overcome
them.

It
was with these concerns and while a com­rade from Combate
was
with us that we had the bewildering surprise of receiving a letter
from Combate
on
9 September, laconi­cally informing us of the decision to
sus­pend selling ICC publications in the Combate
bookshops. Our reply, published in the International Review (no. 8),
was a vehement protest against such a decision which we described
quite rightly as “aberrant”.
We demanded an explanation in that letter and demanded that Combate
withdraw its decision.

We
are satisfied to have received now both the explanations and
rectification which we demanded and will let pass the ironic comments
accompanying them. The healthy relations which should exist between
mili­tant groups of the class are for us an extremely serious
problem. We intend to remain firmly resolute and alert to defending
these relations in order to root out the perverted customs which
Stalinism introduced into the life of the class for the past decades.

We
will keep in mind the suggestion to repu­blish material from
Combate
on
concrete struggles. We must, however, assert that we have significant
differences with Combate
on what the task of the revolutionary press should be. For Combate
the
press is essen­tially a vehicle for information and descrip­tion,
for us it is an instrument of inter­vention and political
orientation.

The question is not a difference between workers in struggle and
‘professors’, but between immediatists who are content to
‘inform’ and political groups who say who they are, and who
defend a revolutionary orientation within the class and in its
struggles.

Also, we hope to see Combate defend a clearer orientation
in its publications by openly confronting the positions of other
political currents.

A mountain out of a molehill

Dear Comrades,

Your
interpretations are quite remarkable and it’s a great pleasure to
read them, but, alas, the facts are much more prosaic and banal. It’s
always better to check up on the facts before hurling down the
gauntlet.

The
facts: a comrade who misunderstood a decision taken at a meeting;
other comrades who don’t read letters once they have been written.
The decision: the bookshop in Oporto decided that it would no longer
look after the distribution of your publications in the bookshops of
Oporto, Lisbon and Coimbra, because of commercial problems. This has
nothing to do with the selling of your publications in our bookshops.
More­over, the bookshop in Lisbon has always dis­played your
publications, and will continue to do so.

We
thank you for your concern for us, which has twice led you to
consider Combate’s
ideas sufficiently interesting to figure as the subject of your
critiques in the pages of your publications. We would like to point
out, however, that in the pages of Combate
you will find a lot of information provided directly by workers from
concrete struggles -- banal, of course, but such things make up the
small world the working class lives in while it waits for the
pro­fessors to change society. Perhaps some of your readers would
like to see some of this material in your publications?

Revolutionary greetings,

The Combate Collective

CONTRA-A-CORRENTE,

Edicoes - Livraria,

Lisbon, 5 January 1977.

Life of the ICC:

International Review no.10 - 3rd quarter 1977

3458 reads

Texts of the Mexican Left 1937-38

3004 reads

Introduction

The 1936-9 war in Spain was to be a decisive test for
the left groups which had come out of a IIIrd International by now
definitively in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Beginning as
a sudden,
spontaneous response by the workers to the military insurrection led
by Franco, this class response was very quickly diverted from its
class terrain with the help of the ‘left’ -- the Socialist and
Sta­linist parties, the anarchists of the FAI and the
syndicalists of the CNT. It was thus transformed into a capitalist
war.

The
fact that the Socialist and Stalinist parties should have exalted the
war effort and put themselves at its head was hardly surprising.
Since they had long since gone over to the capitalist camp, these
‘workers’ parties were only doing their job; the war was simply
the continuation of their policy of national defence in another form.
Be­cause of their ‘working class’ and ‘socia­list’
past, these parties were, out of all the political forces of the
bourgeoisie, the best equipped to mystify the working class, derail
it from its own struggle, and mobilize it for the imperialist
massacre.

With
these big parties of the left, then, their position in favour of the
war and their participation in it were perfectly in order. Anything
else would indeed have been a baffling surprise. But how are we to
understand the fact that currents like the anarcho-syndicalists, the
CNT, the Trotsky­ists, and, behind them, the great majority of
left groups, were dragged into the whirl­pool of the war? Some,
like the CNT and the POUM went as far as to participate in the
(Republican) government of national defence; others, though opposed
to participation in the government (the Trotskyists), still called
for participation in the war in the name of the widest possible
anti-fascist front. Others, more radical, marched off to war in the
name of a workers’
anti­fascist resistance; still others, in order to fight enemy
Number One (Franco) on the war front, the better to wage class
struggle after
the
victory (?!). There were even those who considered that the state in
the republican zone had completely disappeared or that it was simply
a facade without any real meaning.

The
immense majority of these left groups, who for years had taken their
strength and their raison
d’être from
the struggle against the degeneration of the Communist Parties and
the Communist International and who had ruthlessly fought against
Stalinism in the name of proletarian internationalism, allowed
themselves to be caught up in the spokes of the war in Spain. It is
true that this was often done with a heavy heart, with many
criticisms and reservations and with all kinds of justifications to
calm their anxiety; nevertheless these groups actively supported the
war in Spain. Why?

First
of all there was the phenomenon of fascism. This problem had never
been clear­ly and correctly analyzed in the Communist
International, which had very quickly drow­ned it in the tactical
considerations and clever manoeuvres of the United Front. The
difference in the forms of the bourgeois dictatorship -- democracy
and fascism -- had little by little become a fundamental social
antagonism which took the place of the his­toric class opposition
between the proleta­riat and the bourgeoisie. In this way class
frontiers were completely covered over and confused: democracy became
a terrain for the mobilization of the proletariat, fascism a synonym
for capitalism. In this new ver­sion of the divisions in society,
the his­torical terrain of the proletariat -- the struggle for
communism -- disappeared compl­etely, and the only remaining
choice for the working class was to serve as an appendage to one or
another bourgeois clan. The workers’ natural revulsion and hatred
for the overt, barbaric repression meted out by the bloodthirsty
fascist gangs was exploited by all the so-called ‘democratic’
forces of capital to derail the proletariat, to fix its gaze on the
‘main enemy’ in order to make it forget that the fascists were
just one element of a class which in the face of the proletariat,
would always be a united and enemy force.

Anti-fascism,
as a substitute for anti-capi­talism, as the immediate priority
in the struggle against capitalism, became the most effective
programme for trapping the prole­tariat in the quicksands of
capital; and the majority of left groups allowed them­selves to
be led into the same quicksands. Although isolated militants were
able to recover after the war, this was not to be the case for
political groups like Union Communiste in France, the League des
Communistes Internationalistes in Belgium, the GIC in Holland, the
minority of the Italian Fraction, and many others who were unable to
save themselves from drowning.

Another
touchstone which these left groups were to trip over was their
complete incomprehension of the profound historical signi­ficance
of war in the epoch of capitalist decline. They only saw the
immediate, con­tingent motivations behind inter-imperialist
confrontations. They didn’t see that beyond these immediate
factors, imperialist wars in this epoch are an expression of the
historic impasse reached by capitalism as a system. The only solution
to capital’s insurmount­able contradictions was the communist
revolution. In the absence of this solution, society was caught up in
an inexorable pro­cess of decay and self-destruction.
Imper­ialist war was the only alternative to the revolution. The
historic character of this movement of destruction and
self-destruction, in direct opposition to the revolution, was a
hall-mark of all wars in this epoch, what­ever form they took on
-- local wars or gene­ralized wars, so-called anti-imperialist
wars, wars of independence or national liberation,
wars for democracy against tot­alitarianism, or wars inside a
country bet­ween fascism and anti-fascism.

Two groups, anchored solidly on the terrain of marxism, were able
to pass the two-fold test represented by the war in Spain: the
Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Commu­nist Left. Despite
weaknesses, their work remains a serious contribution to the
revo­lutionary movement and to this day remains a precious source
of theoretical reflection for militants. They suffered the most
ter­rible isolation, but their convictions re­mained firm,
because they knew that this was the inevitable lot of any
authentically revolutionary group in a period of defeat for the
proletariat, a period that was lea­ding to war. But even though
the deafening roar of the cannons and bombs in Spain smothered the
weak revolutionary voice of the Communist Left, there came from the
other side of the world, from the Marxist Workers’ Group (Grupo de
Trabajadores Marxistas) in Mexico, a manifesto which Bilan saluted
as a “ray of light”.

In the tragic light of the war in Spain, a group of
revolutionaries, some of whom came from a break with Trotskyism,
situated them­selves on a class terrain and denounced the
imperialist war, denounced all its consc­ious and unconscious
defenders, and called upon the workers to break from the repulsive
alliance of classes represented by the anti­fascist war front.
The effort to set up this revolutionary group was a particularly
difficult one; it was tragically isolatedin
a distant country like Mexico, it was subjected to heavy repression
by the democratic state, it was attacked from all sides, particularly
by the Trotskyists, who laun­ched against it a furious campaign
of slan­der and denunciation to the police. Begin­ning with a
position of opposition to the ‘anti-fascist’ war in Spain, the
group quickly felt the imperious necessity to con­sider the whole
historical situation and to make a critical examination of all the
theo­retical and practical postulates of the Trotskyist movement.

On
many fundamental questions, we share with this group the same
concerns and the same political conclusions, particularly on the
period of decadence and the national quest­ion. We salute them as
our predecessors and as a moment in the historical continuity of the
proletarian programme. By publishing a first series of documents by
this group, we are demonstrating the life and reality of this
evolving political continuity. These documents, which have been
almost totally ignored by the revolutionary movement, will, we are
sure, be of great interest to all revolutionary militants, since they
bring new elements to the work of reflecting on the problems of the
proletarian revolution.

In
another issue of the International
Review we
will publish two theoretical texts by this group, one on
nationalizations, and the other on the national question.

International
Communist Current

*************

The massacre in Barcelona, a lesson for the workers of Mexico!

The
defeat suffered by the workers of Spain must not be repeated in
Mexico. Every day we are told that we live in a democratic republic,
that we have a workers’ government, that this government is our
best defence against fascism.

The
workers of Spain believed that they were living in a democratic
republic, that they had a workers’ government, that this
govern­ment was their best defence against fascism.

While
the workers’ guard was down, while they were putting their trust in
a capita­list government and not in their own stren­gth, the
fascists prepared their coup in July last year in full view of the
govern­ment, just as the Cardenas government is allowing Cedillo,
Morones, Calles etc to prepare their own coup, while lulling the
workers with its ‘proletarian’ demagogy.

How was it possible that the workers of Spain didn’t see last
July that the ‘anti­fascist’ government had betrayed them by
allowing the fascists to prepare their coup? How is it possible that
Mexican wor­kers didn’t draw any lessons from this painful
experience?

It is because
the Spanish government has carried on with its demagogy and because
it faced the workers with the
deceiving slogan: ‘Fascism is the
only enemy!’

By
taking over the leadership of the war that the workers had started,
the bourgeoi­sie converted a class war into an imperia­list
war, a war in which the workers have given their blood to defend the
republic of their exploiters.

Their
leaders, having sold themselves to the bourgeoisie, put forward the
slogan: ‘Don’t raise any class demands until we have beaten the
fascists!’ And for nine months of the war, the workers didn’t
organize a single strike; they allowed the government to suppress the
base committees which were thrown up in July, and to subordinate the
workers’ militias to the generals of the bourgeoisie. They
sacrificed their own struggle so that it wouldn’t get in the way of
the struggle against the fascists.

Why is Cardenas giving support to Azana?

Is
it to give the workers confidence in their own class instincts? The
Cardenas government has a vital interest in preven­ting the
workers of Mexico from understand­ing why the anti-fascist
government in Spain allowed the fascists to prepare their coup.
Because they understand that what happened in Spain is also about to
happen in Mexico.

This
is why Cardenas has given his support to the legally constituted
Azana government and sent arms to it. He claims demagogic­ally
that these arms are for the defence of the workers against fascism.

The
most recent news from Spain has destroy­ed this lie once and for
all: the legally constituted Azana government has used these arms to
crush the heroic workers of Barcelona when on 4 May this year they
dared to defend themselves against the government which was trying to
disarm them.

Today,
as yesterday, the Cardenas govern­ment is aiding the legally
constituted Azana government not against the fascists but against the
workers.

The bloody repression which has come in the wake of the Barcelona
workers’ uprising has shown up the real situation in Spain like a
flash of lightning lights up the night. The illusions of nine months
have been shattered. In its ferocious struggle against the workers of
Barcelona, the ‘anti-fascist’ government has cast off its
disguise. Not only did it send its special police, its assault
guards, its machine-guns and tanks against the workers -- it even
released fascist prisoners and brought back ‘loyal’ regiments
from the front, thus exposing this front to Franco’s attack!

These facts have proved that the real ene­mies of the Popular
Front are not the fas­cists, but the workers!

Workers of Barcelona!

You
have struggled magnificently, but you have been beaten. The
bourgeoisie has been able to isolate you. Your own strength alone was
not enough.

Workers
of the rear-guard, you must struggle alongside your comrades on the
front against the same enemy: not, as your bourgeoisie tell you,
against Franco’s army, but against the bourgeoisie itself, whether
fascist or ‘anti-fascists’.

You
must send agitators to the front with the watchword: rebellion
against your own generals! Fraternization with soldiers of Franco --
the majority of whom are peasants who have fallen prey to fascist
demagogy because the Popular Front government has not fulfilled its
promise to give them land! A common struggle of all the oppressed,
whe­ther workers or peasants, Spaniards or Moroccans, Italians or
Germans, against our common enemy: the Spanish bourgeoisie and its
ally – imperialism!

For
this struggle you must have a party which is truly your own. All of
today’s organizations from the socialists to the anarchists are
servants of the bourgeoisie. In the recent events in Barcelona they
once again collaborated with the government to re-establish ‘order’
and ‘peace’. The pre­condition for your victory is for you to
create an independent class party.

Forward,
comrades of Barcelona, to a soviet Spain!

Fraternization with the peasants who have been duped into joining
Franco’s army, for a struggle against your common oppressors,
whether fascist or anti-fascist!

Down with the massacre of workers and peasants in the interests of
Franco, Azana and Companys!

Transform
the imperialist war in Spain into a class war!

Workers of Mexisco!

When will you rise up?

Will
you allow the Mexican bourgeoisie to get away with the same deception
as in Spain? No! Will it take nine months of massacre to make you see
through this decep­tion? No! Let us learn the lesson of
Barce­lona! The deception carried out by the Spanish bourgeoisie
has only been possible because the leaders have betrayed the
wor­kers, as in Mexico, by abandoning the def­ence of the
workers’ interests to the magn­animity of the ‘workers’
government’, and because they have been able to convince the
workers that the struggle against fascism demands a truce with the
republican bourg­eoisie.

The
social leaders in Mexico have abandoned the struggle for economic
demands and have bound the workers to the government.

All
the trade union and political organiza­tions in Mexico support
the sending of arms by the Cardenas government to the murderers of
our comrades in Barcelona. They all sup­port the demagogy of the
government. Not one organization has exposed the real func­tion
of the Cardenas government.

If
the workers of Mexico don’t create a truly independent class party,
we will suf­fer the same defeat as the workers of Spain! Only an
independent proletarian party can counteract the work of the
government, which is dividing the peasants from the industrial
workers with the farce of dividing up a few strips of land in the
lagoon.

The
struggle against the demagogy of the government, the alliance with
the peasants, and the struggle for the proletarian revo­lution in
Mexico under the banner of a new communist party -- this is the
guarantee for our victory and the best help we can give to our
brothers in Spain!

Be on the alert, workers of Mexico! We mustn’t be taken in by
the fake ‘wor­kers’ rhetoric of the government! No more arms
for the murderers of our brothers in Spain!

Fight for an independent class party! Down with the Popular Front
government! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!

Marxist
Workers’ Group

(Grupo
de Trabajadores Marxistas)

May
1937, Mexico

Republic in Spain, ‘democracy’ in Mexico

In
the first moments of the struggle in Spain the proletariat struggled
as an inde­pendent force. Thus the struggle began as a civil war.
But very quickly the betrayal of all the parties transformed the
class struggle into class collaboration, the civil war into an
imperialist war.

All
the parties (including the anarcho-­syndicalists) broke the
strike movement with the slogan: “No
class demands until we have won the war!”.
The result of this policy was that the Spanish proletariat abandoned
the class struggle and gave its blood for the defence of the
capitalist republic. Thanks to the war in Spain the bourgeoisie has
managed to convince the workers of Spain and the rest of the world
that its class interests are the same as those of bourgeois
democracy; it has made the workers abandon their own methods of class
struggle and accept the methods of the bourgeoisie: territorial
struggle, worker against worker. We can thus see how the more the
heroism of the Spanish proletariat and the solidarity of the world
proletariat grows, the more the class consciousness of the workers is
being reduced.

The
world bourgeoisie, especially the so-called ‘democratic’
bourgeoisie, gives its approval to the heroism of the Spanish
proletariat and the solidarity of the inter­national proletariat
in order to derail the struggle from a national terrain to the
‘international’ terrain; from being a stru­ggle against the
bourgeoisie at home into a struggle against the fascism of Spain,
Germany, and Italy. This method has brought great advantages to the
bourgeoisie in all countries: it has been used to break strikes. The
war in Spain and the way the bourgeoisie has made use of it have tied
the proletariat of each country more tightly to its own bourgeoisie.

The
government of Mexico has outdone all the capitalist governments in
the systema­tic and demagogic way it has supported the war in
Spain to strengthen its own position and bind the Mexican proletariat
to the bourgeoisie.

The
workers’ organizations who demand that their government should send
arms to Spain are actually giving their support not to the Spanish
workers but to the Spanish bourgeoisie and their own bourgeoisie.
Sim­ilarly taking up collections and sending volunteers to the
battle-front can only serve to prolong the illusions held by the
workers of Spain and the rest of the world and to provide
cannon-fodder to the Spanish and international bourgeoisie.

The
present government of Mexico has the task of continuing the work of
its predeces­sors, ie destroying the independent movement of the
workers in order to convert Mexico into a safe source of exploitation
by inter­national capital. What has changed from the previous
government is only the form in which this task is being carried out,
ie the intensification of its leftist demagogy. The
present government presents itself to the masses as the expression of
true demo­cracy.

The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to warn its class
and the toiling masses in general that:

-- democracy is simply a form of capitalist, dictatorship and that
the bourgeoisie uses this form when it can’t use more overt forms
of dictatorship;

-- the function of democracy is to corrupt the ideological and
organizational indepen­dence of the proletariat;

-- the bourgeoisie always matches violent methods of oppressing
the workers with corruption;

-- the democratic methods of today have the role of preparing the
brutal repression of the workers’ movement and the setting up of an
open dictatorship tomorrow;

-- and finally the Cardenas government is allowing reactionary
elements both inside and outside the government to forge the weapons
for this coming brutal oppression (amnesty, etc).

The
present government is attempting to sep­arate the workers from
their natural allies, the poor peasants, and to incorporate the
organizations of both classes into the state apparatus. The
government is organizing and giving arms to the peasants so that the
latter will use them against the proletariat in the future. At the
same time it is try­ing to get rid of all the organizations of
the proletariat and form a single party and one union apparatus
directly tied to the state. The government is taking advantage of the
divisions within the proletariat in order to weaken all the existing
organiza­tions: first of all by setting one against the other and
secondly by unifying regional and local sections through aid given
out by the state. Recently the government has been using Trotsky and
the Trotskyists to weaken the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers)
and the Stalinists. The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to
systematical­ly denounce and fight against the manoeuvres of the
government, intensifying the struggle against the government to the
same degree that the government is intensifying its work of
corruption and demagogy; it is to hasten the work of preparing a
class party; it is to elaborate a revolutionary tactic for the
unification of the trade union movement totally independent from the
state; it is to begin systematic work amongst the agricul­tural
workers and small peasants in order to undermine their confidence in
the state and forge an alliance with the workers in the towns.

Every
capitalist government of a semi-colonial country is an instrument of
imper­ialism. The present government of Mexico is an instrument
of American imperialism. Its policies can only serve imperialism and
intensify the slavery of the Mexican masses. The duty of the vanguard
of the proletariat is to unmask the anti-imperialist demagogy of the
government and to show to the masses of this continent and of the
whole world that the collaboration of the Mexican govern­ment is
today indispensable for the extension of imperialism, as can be seen,
for example, in the role played by the Mexican delegation to the
Conference of Buenos Aires. The result of the Conference was the
intensifi­cation of American domination, above all in Mexico.

The
demagogic methods used by the present Mexican government in its
dealings with the workers’ movement and the agitation in the
countryside has so inspired the confi­dence of American
imperialism that the Wall Street banks have offered a huge loan to
the Mexican government on condition that the revenues of the oil
companies serve as a guarantee for the payment of interest. The
government accepted this condition without meeting any opposition
from within the country, which didn’t happen with the prev­ious
government. This was possible because of the popularity the present
government has gained by sending aid to the Spanish government and
distributing land in the lagoon, and also because of its promise that
the loan will be used to build machi­nery. Thus we can see that
the proletariat cannot struggle against the internal policy of the
Mexican government without systema­tically struggling against its
foreign policy, and that you can’t struggle against Cardenas
without struggling against Roosevelt.

Since
the whole policy of the Mexican govern­ment is dictated by the
needs of American imperialism, the same can be said for the right of
asylum granted to Trotsky. It is clear that Cardenas only conceded
the right of asylum to Trotsky with the authorization of his master:
American imperialism, which is banking on using Trotsky for its
inter­national diplomatic manoeuvres, especially for its
negotiations with Stalin.

The
duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to warn the workers of
this situation, while naturally continuing to struggle for the right
of asylum for Trotsky.

(July
1937.)

Marxist Worker’ Group, Mexico

An appeal by Mexican
revolutionaries to workers organizations of this country and abroad

Comrades!

An
organization which claims to be communist and internationalist has
just committed an act which shows that it is neither communist nor
internationalist. The Mexican section of the Internationalist
Communist League has committed the crime of denouncing a for­eign
comrade who lives in Mexico, attacking him for conducting activity
within the wor­king class of this country against the poli­cies
of the government.

Our
enquiry has enabled us to establish the fact that this comrade was
for eleven years, from 1920 to 1931, a member of the German Communist
Workers’ Party and the General Union of Workers of Germany. From
1931 to 1934, he was a member of the German emigre group of the
Communist League and broke with it when Trotsky ordered the different
sections of the Opposition to enter the Second International. For
several years this comrade was a militant of the Revolu­tionary
Workers’ League (the Oehler Group) in the USA, under the pseudonym
of Eiffel, and was a member of the Central Committee and the
Political Bureau. Forced to leave the USA when the authorities
refused to renew his passport, Eiffel took refuge in Mexico as a
representative of the Political Bureau of the Revolutionary Workers’
League, and then he worked in our organization.

As a response to our enquiry, to our request for
an explanation, which is the proper way of relating to other workers’
organizations, the League replied with new slanders, culm­inating
in a denunciation to the police -- the review Fourth International
gives the name of this comrade, his nationality and political
pseudonym.

We are also accused, as an organization, being in the pay of
Hitler and of ... Stalin.

We
know that such methods are typical of organizations who no longer
have anything proletarian about them. These are the methods of
Stalinism, and prior to that the methods used by Social Democracy in
its struggle against the revolutionary vanguard, the
internationalists. The fact that the Communist League is following
the same path is the sign of a political degeneration which makes it
afraid to openly and honestly explain the differences between our two
organizations.

We will now explain the content of these differences.

The
case of Trotsky

Since
Trotsky’s arrival in Mexico, the League has stopped attacking the
Cardenas government, and has begun defending it. It calls the
government ‘anti-imperialist’, ‘anti­fascist’,
‘progressive’ etc. Seeing the danger of such a policy, which will
reduce the vanguard to the level of Stalinism, comrade Daniel Ayala,
then a member of the Mexican League, demanded that the League should
not consider itself hound by the compromise Trotsky had to make in
order to obtain the right of asylum and that it should also free
Trotsky of his political links with the organization. The obvious
duty of any workers’ organization is to fight for comrade Trotsky’s
right of asylum, without changing a single line of its doc­trine,
of its propaganda.

The
Communist League has not understood things in this way, and by taking
responsibility for Trotsky’s acts, has provided the government with
an excuse to expel this com­rade whenever the activity of the
League is inconvenient to it. Our proposition there­fore gave a
better guarantee to Trotsky and allowed the League to fully maintain
its ideological independence.

Daniel
Ayala became a member of the Marxist Workers’ Group and was accused
of being a provocateur, an agent of the GPU, by the Mexican section
of the IVth International.

Since then, the new policy of the League in Mexico
has been the same as that of Stalin­ism, but with a different
theoretical argu­mentation. One example: Diego Riveira, one of
the leaders of the League, speaks openly of the necessity for the
workers to defend “the
independence of our country” (Excelsior,
3 September 1937).
The Mexican Trotskyists joined the social patriots when they gave
them the task of “defending the independence of our country”
against the attempt to “subordinate the administration of our
country to Moscow” (Excelsior,
3 September 1937).

The
war in Spain

In
our leaflet of May 1937 on the massacre in Barcelona, we said:

“All the trade union and political organizations support the
sending of arms by the Cardenas government to the murderers of our
comrades in Barcelona.”

This judgment applies both to the Communist Party and
the League, because they are both an integral part of the
anti-fascist united front whose function is to destroy the
ideological
independence of the workers’ organizations and to incorporate them
into the bourgeois state.

Formerly,
the League fought against the Stalinists for giving support to the
Carde­nas government, of which it said:

“It is in reality the dictatorship of the capitalists in a
camouflaged form, and represents the interests of Yankee capi­tal.
The sole reason for its existence is to maintain oppression by using
radi­cal phrases.”

Since
Trotsky’s arrival, the League has given up this correct marxist
position on bourgeois democratic states, and acts as though the
government stands above classes. The slogans of the League echo what
can be read in the Stalinist press: ‘The
govern­ment must put an end to abuses by the capi­talists”;
“It’s
necessary to fight the passivity of the government”,
etc.

On
the war in Spain, the League criticizes the Stalinists’ support for
the bourgeois democratic government, but it associates itself with
this treason, because it does not explain to the workers that the war
in Spain has become an imperialist war; on the contrary, it takes up
the language of the Stalinists when it says that it’s necessary to
fight on the fronts.

Our
position on the war in Spain

We
are against supporting the republican power, but not for supporting
the power of Franco. We don’t accept the alternative “with
Azana or with Franco”.
On the cont­rary, we think that the only way to beat fascism is,
first of all, for the workers to break out of the discipline of their
‘democratic’ oppressors, because the only front on which the
proletariat can win is the class front.

The
war in Spain, like all wars led by the bourgeoisie, is an imperialist
war, and not a civil war; consequently, those who call on the workers
to support this war are be­traying the real interests of the
oppressed class. Only by following the policy of the Bolsheviks and
other revolutionary marxists during the world war can the workers
make their revolution -- by rising up against their own generals and
fraternizing with the soldiers of Franco. This is the only way to
transform the present imperialist war into a civil war.

…..Lenin, Liebknecht worked for the defeat of their
own government, ie of the bourgeoisie, and for the victory of the
prole­tariat. In Russia the revolution triumphed on the basis of
the defeat of the Russian government. But the Russian revolutionaries
used this defeat to make the proletarian revolution not only in
Russia but in Germany as well. The same thing will happen in Spain.
The rebellion of Azana’s soldiers will be the signal for the
rebellion of the soldiers under Franco’s domination. This is the
only way of making the proletarian revo­lution arise out of the
present imperialist war. Those who say that the revolution will come
after the victory of the Azana govern­ment are lying. What will
follow the victory of the republican government will be a ter­rible
repression of the workers and peasants of Spain, a repression much
bloodier than the massacre of the workers of Barcelona by the
‘democratic’ General Pezas.

The war in China

Forgetting
what he said for years about the Chinese revolution, Trotsky says
today that in China “All
the workers’ organizations ... will carry out to the end their duty
in the war of liberation….”.
Today Chiang Kai-shek is the hero of the war of libera­tion, and
it is the workers’ duty to support the war. But Trotsky doesn’t
explain how a war led by the bourgeoisie can be a war of
‘liberation’. Stalin also says that the workers “will
carry out to the end their duty to the war of liberation”,
but he doesn’t worry about the “programme
and poli­tical independence”
which Trotsky says the workers absolutely must not abandon. Trotsky
continues to speak of this independent struggle at the same time as
he abandons it in deeds. It’s worth drawing attention to a minor
fact here. A note inserted into no.13 of the Fourth
International review
rectifies an error in the text of Trotsky’s article on the war in
China which he gave to the Mexican journal Excelsior;
in Excelsiorthe
words “absolutely
without abandoning”
were replaced by the Stalinist phrase “without
taking into consideration ...”.
What is so serious and so tragic is that the Fourth
International originally
reproduced the same version of Trotsky’s article without correcting
it. If the leaders themselves confuse the Stalinist with the
Trotskyist version, how are the workers supposed to recognize the
right one?

In
the case of China as in the case of Spain, the workers will remember
one thing: by asking them to do their duty, the League and the
Communist Party are asking them to abandon their own struggle and
give their support to the ‘liberating’, ‘anti-imperia­list’,
‘anti-fascist’, ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie.

Our
position on the war in China

The
only safeguard for the workers and pea­sants of China isto
struggle as an indepen­dent force against the two governments. By
organizing a struggle against their own bourgeoisie, the Chinese
revolutionaries will sow the seeds of revolt against the Japanese
government, and out of the frater­nization of the workers and
peasants of both countries the proletarian revolution will arise. If
the revolutionaries unite themselves with the bourgeoisie to defend
the fatherland until the war is over, as Stalin and Trotsky advise
them to do, they will assist in the destruction of the flower of the
proletariat and peasantry of both countries; and at the end of it all
the two conflicting bourgeoisies will come to an agreement to ensure
the joint exploitation of
the Chinese masses.

In
all situations, our position is based on one criterion: the class
interests of the proletariat require its absolute independ­ence.
Its only hope is the proletarian revolution. All ‘wars of
liberation’, all ‘anti-fascist wars’ are fundamentally
direc­ted against the proletarian revolution. To give ones’
support to these wars is the same as struggling against the
proletarian revolution.

*************

The
comrades of the Marxist Workers’ Group conclude that they are
neither agents of Hitler, nor of Mussolini, nor of Stalin. They
continue to be marxists, whereas on the fundamental questions
confronting the wor­kers’ movement, the Stalinists and the
Trotskyists have arrayed themselves on the same side.

For a real communist party in Mexico

“National
defence and democracy:
these are the solemn formulae for capitulation by the proletariat to
the will of the bourgeoisie.”
(Manifesto
of the Second Congress of the Communist International)

Never
has the communist movement been in such ruins and degeneration as it
is today. The so-called Stalinist and Trotskyist ‘communists’
have long since abandoned the communist road, capitulating before the
twin fetishes of our class enemy: democracy and the fatherland. Of
true communists there remain only small groups in a few countries,
like the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which in exile
prepares for the day of the proletarian revolution in its country,
and another “fraction”
with similar political positions in Belgium. It is the work of these
two groups which has inspired us in our effort to create a commu­nist
nucleus in Mexico.

In May last year, when wehad only just held our first
talks with several other comrades, the majority of them ex-members of
the Internationalist Communist League, the massacre of our class
brothers in Barcelona by the hangmen of the ‘workers’ government
of Azana and Companys forced us to launch our first publication: our
leaflet entitled ‘The Barcelona Massacre: A Lesson for the Workers
of Mexico’.

We
stated in that leaflet our opposition in principle to the
participation of workers organizations in the war in Spain, which
must be characterised on
both sides an
imperialist war, and we put forward the slogan of revolutionary
defeatism,
as the only watchword that can separate the proletariat from ‘its’
bourgeoisie and bring it towards the revolution.

At the same time we denounced the complicity of the ‘workerist’
government in Mexico, and all the worker organizations in the
country, in the massacre of our class brothers in Spain.

However,
such basic errors are not something special to Mexico. On the
contrary, they are common to the communist movement in all colonial
and semi-colonial countries, as was shown with cruel clarity by the
defeat of the proletarian revolution in China. Such false assumptions
had their origin in the unfinished and, in part, incorrect state in
which the Communist International left the problem of the proletarian
struggle in countries like Mexico and China.

Our
first task, consequently, is a critical study of the positions of the
Communist International (naturally not of today’s Comintern which
shares nothing with commu­nism except the name, but that of
Lenin’s time) concerning the appropriate tactics for the colonial
and semi-colonial countries. Only provided that we complete that task
can we prepare a solid basis for the future Communist
Party in Mexico.

Departing
from the same marxist principles which Lenin and the other communists
of that time did, but profiting from the great experiences since then
(particularly the Chinese Revolution of 1926-28), we shall revise the
tactical conclusions arrived at by these comrades.

In
other words, to publish a new thesis on the struggle in the colonial
and semi-colonial countries is our most urgent task. We have not yet
completed this task, owing in the first place to our still fairly
reduced numbers and to our lack of exper­ience in such
theoretical work. This is the first time in Mexico that a group of
workers is dealing with the problems of the country in an independent
way, solely and exclusively from a class
standpoint. Our friends, in Mexico and in other count­ries, must
be indulgent of the slowness or imperfections with which we complete
our first task.

While
the discussion continues within our group regarding the fundamental
problems of the proletarian revolution in Mexico, everyday events,
like the ‘nationalization’ of the oil industry, oblige and at the
same time allow us to deal with some of these problems even before
arriving at a complete position, which must be based in an analytical
study of the whole history of the workers’ movement in Mexico and
in other countries of a similar social struc­ture.

In
this sense, we initiate with this first number of our review
Comunismo,
the dis­cussion of the fundamental problems of our struggle, a
discussion which is indispen­sable for the foundation of the
future Party
of the proletarian revolution,
if it is to be based upon solid and truly marxist foundations.

For
this work we invite the co-operation of all comrades in Mexico and
abroad.

We
conclude by affirming the urgency of initiating the work of preparing
the programmatic and organizational bases for a new Communist Party
in Mexico, completely independent from all the currents which, within
the workers’ movement, represent – consciously or unconsciously –
the interest of our class enemy.

The
publication of our leaflet dictated by our desire to awaken
proletarian conscious­ness against the massacre in Barcelona and
in Spain in general, was nevertheless pre­mature in so much as at
that time we did not yet have a clear position on the prob­lems
of our own country. But its publica­tion had a double effect:

1.
On the one hand, it provoked against our group a furious campaign of
calumnies on the part of the so-called Internationalist Communist
League and particularly Leon Trotsky, who accused us of being ‘agents
of fascism’ and denounced to the policethose comrades who shared
our point of view.

2.
On the other hand, our first leaflet brought us the solidarity of the
proletariat of two countries: the Italian and Belgian Fractions of
the Communist Left, who not only defended us from these accusations,
but also published translations of the entire text of our leaflet in
their reviews Prometeo
(in Italian), Bilan
(in French) and Communisme
(also
in French), expressing their satisfaction that, at last, there had
appeared in Mexico the first “rays
of light”.

Stimulated
by this international support and by the letters which the Italian
and Belgian comrades sent us, we are trying to accelerate the
discussion already started within our young group. But the political
and personal difficulties created for us by the accusa­tions and
denunciations of the Trotskyists were so grave, that we lost whole
months in mere self-defence.

In
the end we did advance from negative work to positive work, but we
found it more difficult than we had anticipated. The fun­damental
reason is that in reality in our country never before has there been
posed in a correct form, the problems of the pro­letarian
revolution. During its whole existence, the communist movement in
Mexico was poisoned with the idea of co-operation with the
‘anti-imperialist’ and ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie of the
country.

Our
work, therefore, cannot base itself in the positive
experiences
of the Mexican proletariat, because these have been non-existent. On
the contrary, it has to start with a Marxist critique of the false
bases
upon which the communist movement in Mexico was built.

Geographical:

Deepen:

History of the workers' movement:

Political currents and reference:

General and theoretical questions:

Britain and the international situation (2nd Congress of World Revolution)

2509 reads

The
IInd Congress of the ICC section in Britain, World Revolution, took
place in April this year. Because regular congresses are at the heart
of the organization of revolutionaries, such events reveal the main
preoccupations and tasks of revolutionaries. They allow the
organization to take account of its previous work and draw up future
perspectives. In particular they reveal that revolutionaries have no
other purpose than to fulfill their responsibilities within the class
that has produced them: to clarify “the
line of march, the condi­tions, and the ultimate general results
of the proletarian movement”
(Marx and Engels).

In
the main, the IInd Congress of WR, re­flected the attempt to
build on the founda­tions of our activity laid at the Ist
Congress of the entire ICC in its adoption of the platform and the
awareness of the need for centralized, international work.1
In this sense, far from being a national affair, the congress simply
expressed a moment in the international work of revolutionaries,
which is the only scale of activity possible for a political
organiza­tion of the proletariat.

In
the context of the strengthening of WR’s work the congress affirmed
the increased ability of World Revolution to intervene in the class
in Britain. In particular the publication World
Revolutionnow
appears bi-monthly, and the congress adopted a resolution to proceed
to a monthly regular­ity in 1978.

Other
sessions of the congress took up dis­cussions which are animating
the Current, and, to some extent, the revolutionary movement as a
whole today. One, on the subject of confused groups, has originated
in the need to better understand the actual process by which class
consciousness is appropriated by the clearest elements of the
proletariat today. The process is a painful one, fraught with
mistakes and disorienta­tion, owing to the heterogeneous nature
of the proletariat’s consciousness today, and the effects of all
the limitations imposed on the class by the residues of the
counter­revolutionary period. In understanding that the Current
itself developed within this process, we must identify and win over
those forces whether they are split offs from leftist groups,
elements of degenera­ting communist tendencies, or products of
the class struggle today, which are capable of moving towards
revolutionary regroupment. The question of confused groups assumes
all the more importance in view of the fact that a pole of
regroupment is still being formed after the counter-revolutionary
epoch eventually destroyed any organic continuity with the previous
workers’ move­ment.

Another
question, the state in the period of transition from capitalism to
communism, was a vital subject for discussion at the congress,
considering that the problem has not at all been “solved”
by working class experience, unlike for example, the nature of the
trade unions in decadent capitalism, which the proletariat has
discovered time and again to be reactionary adjuncts of the
capitalist state. Revolutionaries must therefore devote a large
amount of their efforts to clarifying the nature of the
‘post-revolution’ phase of the proletarian struggle, basing their
research as much as possible on the experience of the class,
particularly that of the Russian Revolution. While only the working
class in its prac­tical experience can resolve the problem of the
transition period, the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities
must theoretically prepare themselves today for this barely
understood and formidable task of the future.

The
text from the congress that we are presenting here is on the subject
of the present situation, dealing with both the international and
British situation. It is a contribution to one of the ongoing tasks
of World Revolution and the whole ICC -- to continually analyse the
present period in relation to the general tendencies of decadent
capitalism. This has no academic motive, but is an attempt to make
concrete, in our intervention in the working class, the context of
the basic political orienta­tion we stand for -- the movement of
the world situation towards the alternative of either war or
revolution, the impotence of the bourgeoisie to deal with the crisis
on an economic or a political level, the nature of the
mystifications, particularly those of the left, hurled at the working
class, and the stages of the development of the proletarian struggle
towards revolution. One of the more important aspects of the text is
the attempt to see the British situation in the framework of the
inter­national arena, referring to the above tendencies, which
have already been dis­cussed in previous issues of the
International
Review.

Our
intention is always to make our dis­sections of the evolution of
the present situation as clear and precise as possible, remembering
that they are a guide to action for the proletariat. While in many
respects this today means a call to revolutionaries to understand the
urgency of their tasks and the need to redouble their efforts,
tomorrow our analyses will be a practical weapon wielded by the class
as it directly influences history in a decisive way.

International
situation

1.
In the fourteen years from 1953-1967 inflation, in the eleven leading
industrial countries of the world, averaged 2% per year. In the two
years from 1973-1975 it averaged 13% per year. During the 1960s world
industrial production grew by 6-7% per annum. But by 1974 global
production had stagnated, and in 1975 it fell
by
10%. The volume of world trade from 1964-1974 increased every year by
9% on average, but it too fell n 1975 -- by 6%. As a consequence of
these factors unemployment has risen to an official figure of 5.5% of
the developed world’s labour force, over double the rate during the
post-war ‘boom’.

These
are some of the key figures which high­light the gravity of the
economic crisis which has developed since 1968. It is a crisis
emanating from the recurrence of the saturation of the world market,
marking the definite end of the reconstruction period, and hailing
once again the mortality of the capitalist system.

2.
In 1976 and in the beginning months of 1977 we have seen the
so-called recovery, which was supposed to have dealt with the
recession of 1975, splutter to a virtual halt. The ‘recovery’ was
founded on a shaky basis of stock-building, and a growth in consumer
spending, and thus has failed to significantly affect any of the main
indicators of the economic crisis. The stagnation of world trade has
not really been alleviated, and industrial growth has leveled out,
with the modest target of 5% per year set by the OECD in July,
proving to be over-optimistic. A 3.5% growth rate is now forecast for
1977. Most importantly no real inroads have been made into the
classic features of capitalist crisis: the under-utilization of the
productive forces, and of labour power. On the con­trary, even
during the latest ‘recovery’ a rationalization process is
occurring throughout the economy, with costs of labour and production
being cut back as far as possible.

3.
It is more and more ridiculous to sup­pose that the Keynesian
policies, designed to deal with the problems of the economy in the
recent past, can solve today’s crisis. On the one hand the
bourgeoisie is now terrified at the prospect of reflation:
stimulating production by huge deficit financing, which without an
expanding world market can only lead to even more disastrous
inflation than exists now. But on the other hand deflation, by means
of the restriction of credit, is equally alarming to the ruling
class. The capitalist economy can only function with the goal of
profitability in sight. The promise of little or no expan­sion
can only lead to less and less ‘business
confidence’, falling investment, and, as a result, the further
bankruptcy of the system. Steering a course between these two evils
is becoming more and more difficult as the depth of the crisis
reduces the options open to the bourgeoisie.

4.
A reversion to protectionism, through the means of the further
statification of each national capital, that is policies which in the
end lead to generalized war, are in the long term the only way
forward for the bourgeoisie. The US will attempt to preserve the
cohesion of the Western bloc, which
a policy of autarky within each nation would
threaten, for as long as possible. It seems that the US will attempt
to use the relative strength of the German and Japan­ese
economies to prop up the weaker capitals, (Britain, Italy, Spain,
etc) which as a cor­ollary, will further strengthen American
capital itself. Already calls are being made for the Germans and
Japanese to expand their home markets for the sake of weaker
countries’ exports. Talks have also begun concerning the formation
of a ‘creditor’s club’ to bail out the weaker economies,
financed by the stronger capitals. But even this strategy will sooner
or later be doomed to failure. The trade surplus of the stronger
economies, amounting to $4.5 billion in 1976, cannot soak up the
deficit of the weaker ones, which reached -$27 billion in 1976. (This
is not to speak of the deficit of the ‘Third World’ which in 1976
reached a figure of -$24 billion, or that of the Eastern bloc, which
has accumu­lated a debt of -$482 billion!)

5.
The deepening of the economic crisis will continue to exacerbate
inter-imperia­list rivalries between the Russian and American
axes. On a secondary level the contradictions between the interests
of each nation and those of the bloc, and be­tween the
progressive and backward sectors within each economy, will further
heighten. The most important consequence of the crisis will be the
greater deterioration of the class equilibrium. But the still
existing quiet in the class struggle obliges us for the moment to
concentrate on the former two factors.

6.
In the sphere of international politics we have recently seen the
build-up of ten­sions in Southern Africa. The visits of Castro
and Russian President Podgorny to the ‘front-line’ states of
Southern Africa, the arms aid which goes hand in hand with these
visits, and the undoubtedly Russian-inspired invasion of Zaire,
indicate the manoeuvring of the USSR in this region of the world. Its
manoeuvring is characterized by an attempt to contest America’s
economic and political superiority by military means and by
de-stabilizing the existing situation. On the other hand the USA is
attempting to hold onto its client states of Rhodesia and South
Africa by maintaining a stable situ­ation in these countries,
using economic and political pressure to bring about a gradual
transition to black majority rule. This must be the meaning of the
recent placement of a complete embargo on Rhodesian exports by the
US, and the US-inspired United Nations resolution against apartheid
in South Africa. But despite the manoeuv­ring of both imperialist
blocs in this continent, the situation remains in the balance at the
present time.

The
importance attached to Southern Africa by both America and Russia, as
well as to East Africa and the Middle East, rather than S.E. Asia,
shows the intensification of inter-imperialist struggle in areas
which will be crucial in a third round of global imperialist carnage.

7.
All the talk about strategic arms limi­tation and the danger of
the proliferation of nuclear power, which is currently fash­ionable
amongst the bourgeoisie, cannot hide the ever-increasing volume and
sophis­tication of nuclear armaments held and developed by the
super powers. Carter’s cynical defence of ‘human rights’ in the
Eastern bloc is nothing but the opening shot in a new phase of cold
war and an escape route by means of which an arms agreement with the
Russians can be avoided. Brezhnev has already warned the US about
interfering in Russian affairs and claimed that Carter is endangering
the so-called detente. Considering that the US now requires the left
as an ally in Western Europe the cause of ‘human rights’, as
opposed to ‘anti-communism’, is the most appropriate in its
propaganda war against Russia.

Russia
wants to avoid the political pressure which its economic subservience
to the West is already producing. But even if the USSR succeeded in
repaying its enormous debt to the West, this would only accelerate
its own economic crisis, and compel it towards further military
hostility with America.

8.
The attempt of the US bloc to strengthen itself in Europe is
continuing. We have already implied that America will increa­singly
have an economic stranglehold over its European satellites. This
permits it in large measure to supervise the political teams which
are obliged to put the necessary economic policies into effect.
However, this development has led to extreme tensions between US
interests and those of certain European countries.

In
the face of the economic crisis each national capital requires the
most energe­tic move towards the statification of soc­iety.
This is in order not only to centra­lize and further concentrate
the national capital, but also to facilitate the greater exploitation
and mystification of the working class. The latter purpose is aided
by the fact that the political factions favouring state capitalism
the most are usually left-wing teams spewing out ‘socialist’
rhetoric. However, as the recent histories of Spain, Portugal and
Italy have shown, some of these left-wing teams are distrusted by the
US bloc, and by strong sections of the local bourgeoisie. The CPs
which in these countries are the strongest parties of the left,
threaten backward sectors of the bourgeoisie linked to the US, and
have an affinity (although this has been toned down) to the Eastern
bloc in their international orientation. Thus in these countries
there is an extreme political crisis mainly because a solution which
could satisfy both the interests of the bloc and the national capital
has yet to be satisfactorily found. This crisis intensifies as the
economic situation deteriorates in these countries and the class
struggle promises to develop. The huge student revolt in Italy is a
symptom of the decomposition of both the economic and political
situation in this country. But despite the political crisis in
Western Europe the US is increasingly aware that only the left can
hope to guarantee social peace and economic cohesion -- and thus will
be the most adequate instrument of its heg­emony over Europe.

9.
By contrast, the victory of the left coalition in the French
municipal elections, which anticipates its victory in the general
election in 1978, seems to point the way to the most adequate
solution for both the national bourgeoisie and the entire Ameri­can
axis. This is because Mitterand’s Socialist Party, the dominant
force in the coalition, appears to be Atlanticist; would probably
enact a gradual statification of society; and has the potential
ideological apparel to mystify the working class.

10.
In the Eastern bloc the attempt of the Russian bourgeoisie to
maintain the internal cohesion of its satellites, has met with some
problems in the recent year. In these countries, the fact that
economic and poli­tical life has already been engulfed by the
state means that there is very little room for the bourgeoisie to
manoeuvre against today’s conjunctural crisis. The inability of the
Polish bourgeoisie, for instance, to persuade the working class to
accept brutal price rises in 1976, indicates the extreme rigidity of
Eastern bloc regimes, and the deep political crisis which they must
suffer as a result. In Czechoslovakia the movement of dissident party
bureaucrats and leftists is giving the faction of the bourgeoisie in
power severe headaches. ‘Democracy’, which they advocate, would
if granted undoubtedly lead to the break-up of the remaining
stability of the state apparatus and of the Eastern bloc as a whole.
The fact that the Charter 77 movement coincides with Western
propaganda about civil liberties, adds to the danger of this
dissident bour­geois movement for the interests of the Eastern
bloc. The obvious inability of the Czech ruling class to make
effective use of this dissident stratum (which sees itself as a
weapon to contain proletarian anger) to mystify the class, highlights
the poli­tical bankruptcy of the Eastern bloc.

11.
The charade of bourgeois democracy in the recent Pakistani and Indian
elections points to the extreme weakness of the bour­geoisie in
the ‘Third World’ as it is severely shaken by the crisis. While
Bhutto’s Pakistani People’s Party and Gandhi’s Congress Party
are really the most suitable forces for governmental rule, the
strength of the less politically viable sectors of the bourgeoisie,
which consti­tuted the opposition in these two countries, was
such that in the case of Pakistan, it could not be kept out of office
or neutra­lized without the electoral process being rigged and
manipulated, and the ruling faction resorting to armed force to
preserve its power. In India the fact the opposition did achieve
office must mean that a period of political dislocation is on the
agenda for this country, and a swing back in the long term to the
reinforcement of the state, particularly the army, will become
essential as a result.

12.
The events in China over the last year also bring out the brittleness
of ‘Third World’ countries and of ‘socialist’ coun­tries.
The elimination of the more backward sector of the Chinese
bourgeoisie, the radicals, who supported national indepen­dence
in economic, social, and military life, was not achieved without
violent up­heavals within the party apparatus (witness the wave
of executions now going on), nor without the use of the army to put
down rebellion throughout the country. The in­ability of the
Chinese bourgeoisie to settle its differences in a stable manner,
which will continue despite the victory of the ‘progressive’,
pro-Western moderates, points to the certainty of extreme convulsions
in the political apparatus as the crisis deepens and the working
class takes the path of open struggle again.

The
deeper integration of China and India into the Western bloc, as a
result of re­cent developments, aggravates the reversals the USSR
is suffering on the world arena.

The
British situation

1.
Britain does not face fundamentally dif­ferent problems to those
faced by other weak European capitals, although its poli­tical
crisis is less acute than some, and its economic problems are of a
somewhat unique origin. Once the dominant capitalist power in the
world, but eliminated as such by the Ist and Ilnd World Wars, Britain
has lost its colonies, its military (parti­cularly naval)
strength, and its position as usurer of world production. Its GNP
only accounts today for about 5-6% of the total output of the OECD
countries. The hopelessly low productivity of its capital, a result
of the completion of its industri­alization at the beginning of
the century, is expressed by the fact that today the average age of
British plant (34 years) is three times that of the Japanese! These
factors help to explain the precipitous decline of Britain’s
competitive position on the world market.

2.
Since 1972 British capital has not had a positive trade balance. By
the autumn of 1976, following a severe ‘run on the pound’,
sterling had lost 44% of its pre-1967 value. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Denis Healey, had to appeal to the US bloc, through the
International Monetary Fund, for a $3.9 billion loan to preserve
Britain’s economic life.

Inevitably
conditions came with this loan; conditions which seem to express an
econo­mic and political strategy in the interests of the Western
bloc as a whole. This stra­tegy, in turn, is a reflection of the
pro­cess of internal strengthening of the im­perialist bloc.
On the economic level a deflationary policy was ‘advised’,
invol­ving:

--
a savage reduction in government spending which had resulted in a £11
billion annual deficit in this department.

--
a credit squeeze to attempt to cut the money supply and contribute
with the reduction in government spending to arresting Britain’s
‘above average’ inflation rate.

--
a rejection of import controls and protectionism in general. The
stra­tegy embracing these elements was clearly designed to
enforce an accep­tance of the continuing deterioration of
Britain’s competitive position on the world market, and preserve an
important link in Europe’s capitalist chain.

3. On the political level the centre/left government
of Callaghan and Healey was given implicit support because it would,
as well as implementing the economic policies already mentioned:

--
maintain its commitment to the Western bloc through participation in
NATO with its important nuclear capability, and its army in West
Germany.

--
maintain its commitment to the EEC.

--
continue a policy of the gradual fusion of the weakest elements of
private capital with the state, without upset­ting the mixed
economy, the parlia­mentary process, or American interests in
British capital.

--
maintain social order, through its alliance with the unions and the
mysti­fication of the Social Contract, while continuing to slash
workers’ consump­tion and living standards.

However,
such an economic and political orientation does not necessarily
coincide with the strictly national interests of the British
bourgeoisie which, in the long term, must proceed to a thoroughly
stati­fied economy behind which the working class can be
mobilized by a left-wing governmental team.

4.
The contradictions between the interests of the imperialist bloc and
the nation arise from the immense problems confronting the Callaghan
governmental team today. Defla­tionary policies imposed by the
IMF are not significantly improving Britain’s economic situation,
which is likely to worsen in 1977 as the full effects of the
devaluation of the pound are felt. The measures to centralize the
economy and political life of the country in the hands of the state
are not proceeding very rapidly. Finally, the class equilibrium and
the Social Contract on which it is based are beginning to crack.

The
moves the present Labour Government has made to nationalize certain
sectors of industry and eliminate parasitical elements of the
economic and political apparatus, relatively mild though they have
been, have met with many obstacles. The Shipbuilding Nationalization
Bill was held up by opposi­tion in the House of Lords and has
only been passed now that the Tories have ensured that the profitable
ship-repairing industry re­mains in private hands. The Bullock
Report (an ingenious plan to statify industry with the help of the
unions) has been effectively shelved after furious opposi­tion to
it from traditional sectors of the bourgeoisie and the right-wing
political parties. Measures to curtail the conserva­tive
activities of the House of Lords, and nationalize the banks, are
nowhere near being implemented. The frustration of these measures is
the result not only of the mod­erate nature of the Labour
Government but also of the electoral strength of the more backward
sectors of the bourgeoisie. Now the Labour majority in parliament has
gone, and the government has been obliged to enter into a
quasi-coalition with the right-wing Liberal Party. This will no doubt
further retard a strategy of stratification.

The
Labour Government and its representa­tives entrenched in the
working class in the shape of the trade unions, are finding it
increasingly difficult to uphold the Social Contract. The seamen
already showed their hostility to it in August of last year. The
miners and railwaymen are also promising to reject it in the future.
The carworkers, particularly at British Leyland, the giant,
state-subsidized vehicle corpora­tion, have frequently struck
against the effects of the contract. While the osten­sible reason
for the recent four-week stoppage by the toolmakers at British
Leyland was for the maintenance of differ­entials and separate
negotiating rights, its underlying cause was the impoverishment the
wage freeze is forcing on the whole class. Although the stoppage was
contained by the shop stewards, who prevented the strike from
generalizing and escaping its sectional preoccupations, the refusal
of the workers to go back for the good of the national interest
(British Leyland symbolizes the weakness of British capital), despite
the open alliance of employers, unions, and the state, shows the
capacity for struggle which the class promises for the future.

5.
All the major unions have been obliged, sensing the angry mood of the
class, to proclaim opposition to, or doubt about, the success of a
third phase of the Social Contract and pay restraint. The TUC as a
whole refused to commit itself to the third phase until it could see
the content of the Chancellor’s budget. But considering that the
Social Contract is a vital pillar of Britain’s economic survival it
is essen­tial that it continues. But the bourgeoisie is already
aware that concessions to certain groups of workers, and a flexible
applica­tion of the Social Contract in future is also essential
if there is to be any class peace at all.

6.
The three basic issues confronting the British bourgeoisie today (the
need to accelerate the domination of the state over society, the need
to eliminate or neutralize conservative portion of the economic and
political fabric of the country, and the need to mystify the working
class) can only be dealt with in the long term by a move to the left
of the present government. Only the left of the Labour Party has the
resolu­tion to take the necessary measures of sta­tification
(remember the Lefts in the present Cabinet, Tony Benn and Michael
Foot, were fervent advocates of the Bullock Report). Only the Labour
Left has no qualms about dealing with stubbornly backward sectors of
the bourgeoisie. Finally and most importan­tly it is the left
which is the best placed to derail the class struggle which is
brew­ing today. The Labour Left’s policies have the greatest
echo in the trade unions, and are the best able to present the
interests of the nation as identical with the interests of
‘socialism’ and the working class.

7.
However, the Labour Left by no means has the confidence of the
American bloc, because:

--
it has a plank for the reduction of defence expenditure and
commitment to NATO.

-- it defends a policy of autarky (import controls,
etc) and withdrawal from the EEC.

--
its far-reaching plans for ‘public’ ownership would threaten
specific US interests and undermine politically those factions of the
British bourgeoi­sie most favourable to the US.

--
its close ties with the CP and some Trotskyist groups could influence
it in a pro-Russian orientation in the international arena.

But
despite these large obstacles the Labour Left is still the only
bourgeois faction which has the long-term perspective for sus­taining
capitalist order in Britain. For this reason, whatever the
difficulties which exist today, a compromise between the US bloc and
the Labour Left could legiti­mize the latter for power as a long
range perspective.

8.
The adoption of the recent quasi-coalition with the Liberals, the
first move­ment in this direction since the war, is a sign of the
political crisis which will more and more affect even the British
bour­geoisie. In the short term the ‘deal’ with the Liberals
means a swing to the right and an increase in the difficulty of
slowly pre­paring a government team of the Labour Left. It is
therefore likely that the latter will come to power in the future as
a response to the resurgence of the class struggle and the impotence
of the present team in the face of it. However, at the present time,
and for the immediate future, the Callaghan regime is the most apt
governmental faction for the bourgeoisie. The Lib-Lab pact is a sign
that despite the electoral unpopular­ity of the government, the
bourgeoisie understands the necessity of keeping it in power.